Also See: Michael Jackson Death Deception5800535

John Bellamy Foster is an American journalist, sociologist, essayist and eco-sociologist. He is also editor of Monthly Review, which is a prominent Marxist magazine. He is also a professor of sociology at the University of Oregon.

Robert W.McChesney is a professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Illinois. He has written and edited sixteen books and some journal articles and book reviews. Mc Chesney is also the president and co-founder of Free-Press, which is a national media reform organization.

Synopsis

U.S. current wars makes the observer to wonder whether there exist any similarity and link between new imperialism and the old one in19 century in the U.S. history. In 1898, with Spanish-American war and seizure of Spanish colonies in Caribbean, America emerged as a world power. By refusing to accept the existence of the new Philippine Republic, United - States publicly announced its intention to annex it entirely, and declare it a holy mission.

This part, the "Imperial Ambition" opens with an interview with Noam Chomsky and his opinion about American use of military force which is declared as "The national Security Strategy of the United Sates of America, which permits the use of force in the world. In this way U.S. would rule the world by force, and if there is a challenge against it U.S. will have the right to destroy the challenge before it becomes a treat; Chomsky calls this doctrine preventive war and not preemptive war and makes distinction between thee two: preventive war begins with no grounds in international law. The challenge, the treat can be invented or imagined and is not proven or evident. The point is that America calls it a new norm; to do this America has to select a defenseless target e.g. Afghanistan and Latter Iraq; and to prepare the stage for such wars they had to frighten American people that Bin laden or Saddam Hussein are a treat to their existence.

American imperialism has deep roots in its history and has close relationship with perception of white supremacy and racism. This ideology can be traced back to Christian Crusades, latter colonization of African countries and Latin America. The Declaration of Independence and latter the American constitution confirms this supremacy. Regarding U.S. -Indian treaties, white supremacy was the rationalization and ideology behind theft of Native American lands. So, the very origins of the United States are imperialistic.

Imperialism is an integral part of the capitalist world economy. In 1945 U.S. nation state became so strong and hegemonic and had military force which was unparalleled; as a result of the hegemonic power America also became culturally the center of the world. But around 1968 with the rise of economic rivals, U.S. defeat in Vietnam and world revolution, America's power and hegemony over the world began to decline. So, in order to keep their hegemony over the world, American leaders had two approaches: to persuade Western Europe, Japan and others they can have an alliance of semi- equal with the U.S. though America is the leader of them all; the second approach was called Washington Consensus: to substituted developmenalism with globalization and set out to impose this on the world. America at that period had three objectives: 1. The Counteroffensive of neoliberalism, 2. To deal with military treats and 3. To stop the European Union. After 9/11, which showed that U.S. was vulnerable the hawks entered the scene and diplomatic, multicultural approach was put aside. The war on Iraq was not for overthrowing a dictator or even for oil but to show that American could do it and intimidate both the people of the third world countries not to engage in nuclear proliferation and Europeans.

The imperialism practiced by few rich capitalist had dividend the world into rich and poor nations. The rich countries become richer by using poor counties resources. At the same time the imperialist nations of the world are competing with each other to extend their power over these resources; this completion is called geopolitics. These imperialist nations are not homogenous in their power and their completion some times leads to war. Out of this an imperial power will arise that will dictate and impose its own rule over other nations. America has been the hegemonic power since the Second World War. America's supremacy is partly due to possessing the world's primary currency. United States is willing to use its military force to keep its global hegemony whenever it is needed. But a global left, most of whom are socialist, are opposing American global program.

European countries and their Japanese counter parts are tiring to find ways to catch up with United States. The assumption is that U.S. economy more energetic and successful for its free enterprise nature and Europe's and Japan's old ways can not survive in the new order. But this assumption is not true. They fail to see that U.S. growth in 1990s was financed by borrowing from overseas (as America is the world's largest multicultural conglomerates). Despite this foreigners continue lend money to Americans because it is so productive. Anyhow Americans have a relative dominance over world's economy due to this flow of capital from Europe itself and the rest of the world. The reason why European nations were against the war in Iraq is that in this America will expand its domination over oil fields and intends to grant gigantic tax cuts to the richest of fellow Americans and at the same time boost governmental spending through defense budget.

But there is always struggle and resistance against imperialism in the history. The most significant movement against imperialism has taken place in the poor countries and the third world. The resistant groups are also active in America: a broad antiwar movement led to ending war in Vietnam. Though the term "war on terrorism" has persuaded many people that the war in Iraq is for defending American's right, nevertheless justice movement are still active and alive; these movements are a sort of mass social phenomenon which can lay the foundation for an anti-imperialist movement. But there must be an organized left presence to tie different movements and strands together.

For organizing an anti-war movement there is a need to gather all the help from contradictory objectives. So the movement needs to mobilize and combine the organizational resources and strategic potential of the labor movement, particularly the new generation of global justice activist; but the paradox here is that this goal is universal and internationalist while class power is reproduced nationally. To solve the problem a left movement should locate itself within both labor movement and other movements in the first world and to understand the old issue of state power in a new internationalist way in order to help to third world struggle.



This book contains 15 essays on different aspects of American Imperialism which contains the leading left-wing and leading Marxist annalist of imperialism to examine the nature and prospects of U.S policy. Each essay is written by important figures that are critical toward Bush administration. In part one, US imperialism has long History: Noam Chomsky, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, John Bellamy Foster, Harry Magdoff, Robert McChesney and Immanuel Wallerstien have contributed to the part. Part two, Geopolitics and Political Economy of US Imperialism is written by William K Tabb, Klare and others. Part three, Resistance are written by samir Amin, Barbara Epstien, Bernardine Dohhen and... Although the book is written by many writers and contributors, yet the editors were able to gather all essays together without losing the coherence. The essays are organized in a way that gives the reader an understandable view about the history of imperialism in U.S. The book tries to be comprehensive but it has its own shortcomings: the solutions given by writers for confronting imperialism are superficial and simplistic and it has its roots in Marxist ideology of the essayists; Pox Americana puts so much emphasize on the role of labor movement and working class.|The American Civil War was a brutal conflict which took place in the United States of America between 1861 and 1865 and still has serious repercussions to this day.

To understand why this break up of the Union occurred and how it led to a bloody struggle for four years that pitted family member against family member, here follows a brief summery of the polarised opinions that divided the economic and political attitudes in the USA as the 1850's drew to a close.

The Southern States of America, who are often referred to as Dixie were monopolised by powerful plantation owners whose feudal and archaic views were predominant throughout the society. The source of their wealth came from the tobacco and cotton crops which were the mainstay of the Southern citizens.

At that time, the demand for cotton and lint throughout the world was immense and guaranteed the Southern States prosperity, as long as the crops could be farmed economically. In order to do this, the plantation owners relied heavily on 'free labour' that was provided by the slaves who worked the fields. The South's riches were deeply rooted in slavery.

By the 1850's slavery was only practised in the South. It had been prohibited in the North which considered it morally offensive and uncivilised.

This issue however, was not the only difference between the North and South. Because of it's agricultural success and wealth, the South had no motivation to develop any industry other than the production of cotton and tobacco. On the other hand, the North was industrially advanced and was attracting vast numbers of European immigrants who further enriched the North with their array of skills, talent and knowledge. People in the North were developing rapidly and were keen to expand into the New Territories.

The animosity between the North and South could be seen in the dispute over the New Territories. As the soil was being exhausted by the unrelenting cotton farming, Southern plantation owners were planning on spreading into the newly discovered Western Territories taking cotton and slavery with them. While most Northerners, except a handful of extremists, were prepared to tolerate slavery in the Southern States, they were extremely determined to prevent it from being introduced in the Western Territories that would eventually be admitted into the Union.

In 1860, the election of Republican candidate, Abraham Lincoln, as the President of the United States of America, strengthened the Southern States' anxieties, particularly as Lincoln had been elected on a anti-slavery ticket. Now, not only the banning of slavery in the Western Territories seemed on the cards, but also the outlawing of this practice throughout the US.

The South became worried for its future and began listening to extremists who advocated succession from the United States and the establishment of an independent nation. These fanatics asked, why should the Southern States pay tax and duty to the North, when her produce and wealth was completely independent? If the South was allowed to keep hold of its revenue instead of enriching the North then, the radicals argued, the South would become extremely prosperous. They stressed that the abolition of slavery would paralyse cotton production and threaten white supremacy throughout the South.

These views became popular with Southerners who were convinced that the North's bulging economy and anti-slavery attitudes would ultimately threaten their way of life. They believed that if they did not act soon, then they would become the 'poor relations' to the North.

Southern moderates urged caution and were convinced that any move to independence from the Union would not be tolerated by the North and seen as unconstitutional. The moderates urged the South to wait and see what the implications would bring and just how the Federal government would move against slavery.

Much to the revulsion of Northern politicians, South Carolina was not prepared to wait and on the 20th December 1860, she declared herself independent from the Union. South Carolina was quickly followed by Florida, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas. Together they formed the Confederate States of America and elected Jefferson Davis as their President in February 1861.

The Confederates States started to put together an army and when the newly inaugurated Lincoln attempted to supply the Union Fort Sumter in South Carolina the Confederates bombarded it. Lincoln's response was to call for a 75,000 man army in order to put down the rebellion and blockade Southern ports. This was interrupted as an act of war against the seceded states and Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas and North Carolina split from the Union in sympathy and joined the Confederacy.

The Confederates believed that they could repel all attempts by the North to rejoin the Union and had confidence that their superiority as horsemen and gunmen would be enough to counter their industrial foes. The South also had faith that they could count on the support of England, who they believed would be keen to maintain their mutual commercial interests.

Unfortunately, for the South, England had no desire to go to war with the North and had accumulated a large surplus of cotton for themselves over the preceding years. In addition to this, England was not sympathetic to the slavery cause.

The South soon realised that she would have to proudly stand alone and fight to protect her lifestyle.

The Confederacy demonstrated extreme bravery and a spirit for their fight, but, as ever their archaic outlook thwarted them. To be victorious in this war, they would need to adopt modern fighting methods and a business like approach to administration. The communications, transportation, equipment, rations and medical supplies all required excellent co-ordination and management and the armies would require a strong backbone of highly skilled workers and modern, productive factories to support them.|The Last Paradise is a grand, sweeping panoramic novel of post-Civil War Galveston, Texas, in 1900. It is a poetic novel of warmth and humor, of philosophic musings and deep insights into the human psyche. I was reminded of the writing of John Steinbeck, in that both often dealt with themes involving the struggle of the working class. This is Kasenow's debut novel, yet it is imbued with a rich flair and characterization rare for any novel. The friendship of two rough working men, Newt Haskins and Maxwell Hayes, and their lives and interactions with the racially diverse inhabitants of an area of Galveston that was known as the Alleys makes up much of the book. The descriptions of Galveston during the Reconstruction era leading up to and including the infamous 1900 hurricane are wondrous. The book is like a time capsule, taking the readers to that time of Jim Crow laws, the Klan and crooked cops, making the readers feel they are there and witnessing it all.

Galveston was a paradise in many ways, and the moneyed businessmen of the city tried their best to market that sort of image to companies like Sears to draw even more wealth to the city and their coffers. The title of the book acts on different levels, also being ironic, in that if it could be said that Galveston was a sort of paradise, it was a fallen one, due to pervasive class and racial injustices that ran rampant through the city like the proverbial worm in the apple. The people of the Alleys serve as the cohesive focus of the novel, and characters such as the simple-minded woman called Burly Horse and the love of her life, a man called Marbles who had his head kicked by a horse when he was twelve, are very memorable creations that seem as if they could step right out of the pages into your living rooms.

The novel starts with a court scene. Newt and Maxwell are up before Judge Hammer, because they supposedly were having a drunken knife fight. We learn later that it was something more, and the "knife fight" was a diversion, but all they know at the time is they're before a judge known for his toughness and mysogynism with an incompetent lawyer defending them. It's one of many funny scenes in the book. They stage as much of the proceedings as they can, having Burly Horse masquerade as Newt's lover and the reason behind the fight, as the third point of a romantic triangle. She shouts out at various times "Kill `im, Newt! Kill `im!"

Because they throw the judge off on tangents as he talks to them, and messes with his train of thought by their bizarre and unlikely reason for their knife fight, he goes relatively easy on them. He tells Newt in a humorous interchange:

"I'm going to fine you three dollars, with the stipulation that you don't have a drink for one year." "I can do that, Your Honor," Newt said. "Like hell you can! That's three-hundred-and sixty-five days without a drink. Not one single drop." "Yes, sir." "Of alcohol." "Beer, too?" "No alcohol of any kind!" "That doesn't seem to be hardly fair," Newt whined.

The kicker is he also has to do a year's worth of "community service, three times a week, at St. Mary's Orphanage." Newt's protestation that "No way, You Honor! I hate kids!" falls on deaf ears. The judge tells him it's either that or "it's one year in the big house."

Maxwell talks about his dad, claiming: "My Pappy died at Shilo. Fightin' for the Rebs." He shows the judge a Civil War pistol he has with him, which kind of freaks the judge out: "Jesus Christ! What the hell's he doing with a gun in my courtroom?" Max has only one bullet in the gun, a golden one. When the judge asks him why, he says:

"I can't get into too much trouble with a single shot," Maxwell answered. "I can only shoot one man. With six bullets I can kill six."

The Last Paradise pits Maxwell and Newt against Boss Connor, a ruthless businessman who is an archetype of white supremacy and racial prejudice. Boss Conner owns the sawmill Maxwell and Newt work at, and has his fingers in many other pies, including being the owner of the bar and whorehouse where another memorable figure, the albino Bleach, acts as the proprietor. Old Man Connor owns the cops, also, and orders the cruel policeman Brood Hale to beat Maxwell up on more than one occasion in the book. He wants to prevent the "coloreds" from demanding better pay and being involved in a union, and he doesn't like to see them with any of the white women of the city. Maxwell's eventual revenge against Hale is one of several superbly realized scenes in the novel.

If you like sweeping historical novels that draw you into to the tale and make you empathize with the characters, if you like books that will grab a hold of you, and thrill you with both lots of action and descriptive, poetic language, The Last Paradise is one of the year's must reads. It should be on every best selling books list, and it is a very impressive debut from an extremely gifted author. I'm definitely looking forward to reading more novels by Michael Kasenow in the future.

--Douglas R. Cobb--|Definition: Lynching is a mob act of vigilantism to illegally execute an accused person by a mob. The term allegedly originated as a reference to a Virginia Justice of the Peace (1736-96). These acts often occurred in front of thousands of spectators, who would gather "souvenirs" afterward.

Lynching is another sad fact of American history and has been immortalized in song ("Strange Fruit", recorded by Billie Holliday, in pictures (the poignant, "The Black Book"), in a scholarly tome (Ralph Ginzburg's, "100 Years Of Lynchings"), and in fiction (In Richard Wright's "Big Boy Leaves Home", 1938, Big Boy and his friend Bobo accidentally shoot and kill a white man. The black community fearful of a mass killing spree by whites hide the boys, hoping to help them escape later. However, Bobo is caught and lynched as a frightened Big Boy looks on)..

Lynching was originally a system of punishment used by whites against African-american slaves. It seldom mattered whether the charges were true or not, since it usually camde down to the word of whites against the accused black person.

"The accusations against persons lynched, according to the Tuskegee Institute records for the years 1882 to 1951, were: in 41 per cent for felonious assault, 19.2 per cent for rape, 6.1 per cent for attempted rape, 4.9 per cent for robbery and theft, 1.8 per cent for insult to white persons, and 22.7 per cent for miscellaneous offenses or no offense at a 11.5 In the last category are all sorts of trivial "offenses" such as "disputing with a white man," attempting to register to vote, "unpopularity", self-defense, testifying against a white man, "asking a white woman in marriage", and "peeping in a window." (Gibson). However, whites who protested against this were also in danger of being lynched.

Gibson writes, "In the last decades of the nineteenth century, the lynching of Black people in the Southern and border states became an institutionalized method used by whites to terrorize Blacks and maintain white supremacy. In the South, during the period 1880 to 1940, there was deep-seated and all-pervading hatred and fear of the Negro which led white mobs to turn to "lynch law" as a means of social control. Lynchings--open public murders of individuals suspected of crime conceived and carried out more or less spontaneously by a mob--seem to have been an American invention. In Lynch-Law, the first scholarly investigation of lynching, written in 1905, author James E. Cutler stated that 'lynching is a criminal practice which is peculiar to the United States'."

John F. Callahan states that, "Lynching did not come out of nowhere. Its actual and symbolic grounding in history and literature goes back to slavery and slavery's defining persons of African descent as property. During slavery there were numerous public punishments of slaves, none of which were preceded by trials or any other semblance of civil or judicial processes. Justice depended solely upon the slaveholder. Executions, whippings, brandings, and other forms of severe punishment, including sometimes the public separation of families, were meted out by authority or at the command of the master or his representative."

Though the Chicago Times and New York Times derided the practice of lynching, Other newspapers abetted these efforts, often creating the rationale for the attack. R.W. Logan writes, "It is next to impossible to locate a newspaper article that does not identify the victim as a Negro or that refrains from suggesting that the accused was guilty of the crime and therefore deserving of punishment. For example, The New Orleans Picayune described an African-American who was lynched in Hammond, Louisiana for robbery as a "big, burly negro" and a "Black wretch"

On November 7th, 1837, Elijah Parish Lovejoy, the white editor of the Alton Observer, was killed by a white mob after he had published articles criticizing lynching and advocating the abolition of slavery. On 9th March, 1892, three African American businessmen were lynched in Memphis. When Ida Wells Barnett (a black woman) wrote an article condemning the lynchers, a white mob destroyed her printing press. They declared that they intended to lynch her but fortunately she was visiting Philadelphia at the time.

It is estimated that between 1880 and 1920, an average of two African Americans a week were lynched in the United States. Dr. Arthur Raper was commissioned in 1930 to produce a report on lynching. He discovered that "3,724 people were lynched in the United States from 1889 through to 1930. Over four-fifths of these were Negroes, less than one-sixth of whom were accused of rape. Practically all of the lynchers were native whites. The fact that a number of the victims were tortured, mutilated, dragged, or burned suggests the presence of sadistic tendencies among the lynchers. Of the tens of thousands of lynchers and onlookers, only 49 were indicted and only 4 have been sentenced."

After the First World War ten black soldiers, several still in their army uniforms, were amongst those lynched. Between 1919 and 1922, a further 239 blacks were lynched by white mobs and many more were killed by individual acts of violence and unrecorded lynchings. During the 100 year period from 1865 to 1965 over 2400 African Americans were lynched in the United States. 1892 had a record 230 deaths (161 black, 69 white).

According to social economist Gunnar Myrdal: "The Southern states account for nine-tenths of the lynchings. More than two-thirds of the remaining one-tenth occurred in the six states which immediately border the South: Maryland, West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Kansas." (Gunnar Myrdal, "An American Dilemma," 1944, pp. 560-561).

In 1901George Henry White, the last former slave to serve in Congress, proposed a bill in that would outlaw lynching, making it a federal crime. He argued that any person participating actively in or acting as an accessory in a lynching should be convicted of treason. White pointed out that lynching was being used by white mobs in the Deep South to terrorize African Americans. The bill was defeated.

In 1935 President Franklin Roosevelt declined to support the Costigan-Wagner bill, designed to punish sheriffs who failed to protect their prisoners from lynch mobs. He believed he would lose the votes of southern whites and therefore, not be re-elected. In July of that year six deputies were escorting Ruben Stacy to Dade County jail in Miami when he was snatched away by a white mob and hanged outside the home of a white woman named Marion Jones, whom had made a complaint against him. The New York Times reported that a later investigation revealed Stacy "Went to the house to ask for food; (and) the woman became frightened and screamed when she saw Stacy's face."

Other lynchings of note: Scottsboro (1931), James Byrd (1997), Will Brown (Omaha, NE, 1919)

Sources:

Robert L. Langrando, "About Lynching."

Richard M. Perloff, "The Press and Lynchings of African Americans," Journal Studies, January 2000, pp. 315-330.

R.W. Logan, "The Betrayal of the Negro: From Rutherford B. Hayes to Woodrow Wilson," 1965, p. 298.

Robert A. Gibson, "The Negro Holocaust: Lynching and Race Riots in the United States,1880-1950," 1979.

James E. Cutler, "Lynch Law" (New York, 1905), p. 1.|With the 2008 election, America voted the first non-white candidate into the country's highest office and into the highest office of any industrialized country. That position was monopolized until then by whites, primarily males, and exclusively so in the United States, founded by Protestant merchant Europeans thriving on slavery and indentured servitude.

The 2008 election in America shot down a 20-odd-year speculation about the "Bradley effect," wherein white voters would publicly support a non-white candidate while changing minds in the privacy of the voting booth. In effect, the 2008 American election ended white supremacy.

Still, the 2008 transition occurred less than 50 years after Rosa Parks sat on a bus and sparked the American civil rights movement. Less than 30 years had passed since America's incoming First Lady wrote a thesis on America's racial divide. The Harvard Law School graduate has appeared in her role as wife and mother since she nearly derailed her husband's campaign by saying she was proud to be an American upon his nomination.

The laboriously long, three-month transition between administrations in 2008 America is a symptom of changes needed in a globalizing world. When voters speak, the system needs to react more quickly than at present.

In 2008, America and the world were both moving beyond a conservative, isolationist and patriarchal system of privilege for whites. In America, the system had become so stale that the value of intelligence was downgraded during an eight-year administration to a point where ignorance was made part of the national identity. American voters returned to rationality by affirming that incompetence was not an effective approach to dealing with a tanking economy.

The vast majority of the financial leaders given a free hand to compete without regulation over eight years prior to the 2008 election were white males. Photos in the Annual Report of any of those institutions bear out that reality. Impeccable educational credentials and experience gained through well-connectedness put most of those men into their decision-making positions with salaries equal to those of entertainment, sports and celebrity superstars. Unlike the nouveau riche, however, the financial giants entrenched in the old system no doubt had the financial instinct to protect personal interests first.

Advertisements in high-end publications such as the New York Times Sunday Magazine indicate that America's highest financial leaders are preoccupied with personal portfolios and with competition. Their handling of America's financial crisis during the long 2008 transition is reminiscent of the incoming First Lady's thesis on America's racial divide.

The long 2008 election campaign pitted a woman against a non-white man as the two contenders on the liberal party's ticket. The outcome gave America three months in which to acclimate to a non-white leader. America was prepared for that radical change by the heated presidential campaign in which the country weighed the choices, either to continue on a losing global economic spiral or to take the leap into a promising unknown.

The new leader has been well received by whites during the transition. He is, however, only half non-white and of African heritage. In January, he moves into the White House with his family, truly black Americans born of the slave tradition haunting America since its European origins.

Inauguration day will be the true turning point for America in the democracy affirmed by the 2008 election. That is when America becomes the beacon of enlightened equality the forefathers designed at a time when women and non-white, non-landowning males were not legal citizens.

The historical perspective is the backdrop for the long 2008 transition. Nearly half of America voted for the conservative white ticket. Half of a $700 billion bailout package for America's financial institutions approved around the time of the election was earmarked for use by the new administration. By December, it was under consideration to be tapped even as midnight legislation reversed progressive measures such as banning weapons from state parks.

America voiced its view in the 2008 US election with unquestionable resonance. But it was America's little people and middle class who tipped the scale, not America's white elite.

"White flight" was a term applied to a phenomenon in which whites moved from desegregating neighborhoods in supposed anticipation of all manner of ill effects stemming from a drop in "elite status." Those fears ranged from a drop in real estate values to reduced services to increased costs of insurance.

The Americans who voted for the new President-elect rub shoulders with minorities in daily American life today. Most elite whites do not.

With a minority family moving into the White House, "white flight" fears could be stirring. The management of the 2008 transition indicates that America's white elites are responding in the only alternative to flight. They are clearing out the public vaults and putting them into private storage until the 2012 election makes it safe to take the valuables out again.|The Southern View of the Untrue Civil War History As Taught in the Schools

What people call American History is really Yankee history written by New Englanders glorifying the North.

To the victor goes the spoils. The Victor in the war for Southern Independence was the North. They claimed the right to enforce their point of view of the war on all Americans.

To do this the North in the past 130 years, used persecution, destruction, theft of personal property, oppression of civil rights of the Southern peoples and a total disregard for the Constitution.

They created a very powerful myth. The myth that the Yankee invader used and still uses to justify their invasion of the South was to free the slaves. A bold face lie.

Southern history taught in all the schools, then and now, is just a recitation of the North's justification for invasion.

Northern history taught in Southern schools have the Southern children, conquered children, calling the Northern invaders saviors.

President Jefferson Davis predicted if the North won the war they would re-write history to cover up all their crimes. He was right!

The Yankee myth-makers would have us believe that the South was a poor, backward area before the war. Not true!

Had the South been an independent nation her economy would have ranked as the third largest on the European and American continents.

The Southerner was not materialistic like the Northerner. They were plain folk who enjoyed political, social and economic independence.

Relatively few of those plain folk had the desire to become wealthy. Their cultural heritage was mostly Celtic.

The North hated the easy lifestyle of the South. The wanted to change it or destroy it. As far back as August 1865 at a National Convention of Teachers in Pennsylvania declared that the late conflict had been "a war of education and patriotism against ignorance and barbarism"

They started to impact their Northern view on the minds of the Southern children. They have never stopped!

The war was not fought over slavery but over the stark dissimilarity between the two peoples of the Northern and Southern colonies.

The South differed from the North by habits, morals, institutions, pursuits and mode of thought.

But by now the Yankee myth inundates the Southern School System. Every classroom, in the South, has a picture of "Honest Abe" somewhere in the room. Southern students are requires to study, if not memorize, the Gettysburg Address.

Where is the picture of Jefferson Davis? Robert E Lee? How many teachers that force children to read the Gettysburg address know what it really was intended for?

It was a Lincoln styled war-measure. Its purpose was to drape the invasion of the Southern nation in the robes of morality. It was a propaganda play to keep England and France out of the war on the side of the South. It encouraged slave insurrection.

It was never intended to free slaves. The only slaves Lincoln wanted to free was the ones in the South,. Not the ones in the North.

General Ulysses S. Grant's wife owned slaves. She did not free them till after the war because she said "good help is do hard to come by these days."

Lincoln was no humanitarian or angle or honest. He was entirely the opposite.

He made favorable white supremacy speeches in the years of his early career. While in the white house he planned a system of geographical separation similar to that practiced by South Africa called Apartheid.

He suspended the writ of habeas corpus and had 40,000 political prisoners locked up. He shut down more than 300 newspaper and journals. He illegally imprisoned people he hated.

Lincoln is the only president to order a mass execution of Native Americans in Minnesota in 1863.

This is the Lincoln whose picture hangs in every Southern classroom; the same Lincoln children are taught to worship; the same Lincoln who has been deified by Yankee mythology.

It is time for Americans to wake up. It is time for the South to rise again!|Mens diamond rings are among the most elegant pieces of men's jewelry. The diamond symbolizes success and supremacy and possesses curative properties.

One of the finest ways to put on a diamond is in an elegantly created ring. Mens diamond rings can either simply be a fashion statement or men can wear diamonds in wedding rings, anniversary bands or engagement rings. Men's rings can also be of a religious nature.

The rings come studded in gold, titanium, platinum, stainless steel, and white gold. Gold and platinum are popular among men. More recently, palladium and even tungsten rings have become available.

Mens rings are much wider and opulent than women's diamond rings.

Deciding upon the diamond itself is vital while selecting a ring for your self. Making a smart choice will check the cost of the ring from burning a hole in your pocket.

A very high grade diamond bears an even higher price tag placing it past your reach; whilst you can get a good looking mens diamond ring within the cost-effective range. Diamonds with no inclusions visible to the naked eye between the grades SI1 and SI2 are called eye clean diamonds. They are more affordable and make wonderful choices.

Even a small increase in the carat weight of a diamond leads to an incredible increase in its price. It signifies that a same grade quality diamond of lesser carat weight would cost much less in contrast to a diamond with greater carat weight & similar quality. So you can choose a ring design with four quarter-carat weight diamonds or two half carat-weight diamonds instead of a ring with a single one-carat diamond and save on the cost.

Also, you can choose the standard round or square (princes cut) diamonds instead of the fancy (heart, pear or marquise) shaped ones & also you can opt for a white diamond instead of a colored one to fetch it within your budget. In reality, white color and round or square shaped diamonds are more in style for mens diamond rings.

Mens diamond rings deserve a place on the finger of any man, be it to mark his pledge to the woman he is engaged to; affirm his eternal love for the woman he married; or to simply show his good taste in a powerful way.|Malice toward none

Charity for all

Force is all-conquering

But its victories are short-lived

It is right

That makes might

Destroy your enemies

By making them friends

Sin and self-exaltation

Is a reproach to any people

Oppression is never credible

Thankfully "Honest Abe"

Never lost touch

With the common people

Continually calling upon

And confiding in

The Maker of heaven and earth

President Lincoln called

Three national days

Of fasting and prayer

To cry out for assistance

With national concerns and cares

Acknowledging the pretenses

Of American liberty

Lincoln could not sit by quietly

Endure white supremacy

Happily embrace such hypocrisy

And celebrate patriotically

But instead he lifted up his voice

For the cause of the Almighty

Procuring for all humanity

Justice and liberty

Not content

To trample on the rights of others

Lincoln fought for his black brothers

Restoring the genius

Of American independence

Liberating all subjects

From despots and tyrants

Leaning heavily upon God

With all reliance

Kneeling often

During the Civil War

That to our nation

Unity, He would restore

He who would be no slave

Should neither consent

To have a slave

Those who deny others freedom

Deserve it not themselves

Character is like a tree

And reputation like its shadow

The shadow is what we think of it

The tree however is the real thing

Therefore by propaganda don't be fed

Nor by nepotistic leaders be misled

No man is good enough

To govern another man

Without the other's consent

Otherwise his pursuits will be ill bent

People should be their own rulers

Not judiciary bodies

Such as the Supreme Court

Giving tribunals such power

Disintegrate our human rights and values

Hour by hour

Allowing ill-motivated legislation

To be written, legislated and translated

According to fluctuating whim and circumstance

Economic gain and the national security dance

Thereby afflicting

The disenfranchised with pain

Such governmental imbalances

We the people must disdain

Don't interfere therefore

With the Constitution

A sacred text

That must be maintained

For it alone safeguards our liberty

Reinterpreting it means insurgency

A departure from the founding fathers intent

And a tear in the nation by reason of rend

Not only will offend

But rapidly send

Our nation into utter confusion

Moral erosion and destitution

For this reason President Lincoln

Was repeatedly driven

To his knees

Having nowhere else to go

While dealing with

A divided nation

Opposing opinions and advice

Rampant injustice and vice

Humbly beseeching

The favor of the Earth's Governor

Realizing that

He who made the world

Still governs it

Though weary in well doing

Lincoln did not quit

Earnestly desiring Providence

In regard to the matter

Disregarding godless chatter

Deeply desiring

That all his works and acts

Be done according to His will

Lincoln gave freedom to the slave

Whereby he assured

Freedom to the free

For both to be all they can be

That all might dwell together

In liberty and dignity

Making an Emancipation Proclamation

Lincoln fatherly united the nation

Calling all to repentance

Of sin and transgression

Imploring the mercy of the Lord above

That He might shower on us

His mercy, pardon, and love

To reconcile and rise above

The calamity of injustice and war

For being rotten to the core

That we being the recipients

Of the choicest bounties of heaven

Would be kept from all Pharisaical leaven

Partisan politics

Self-righteousness

But that we might seek

To be on the Lord's side

And there always reside

That our nation

Might be united under God

A government of the people

By the people

For the people

Preserved in peace and prosperity

Established in grace and truth generationally

To forever secure our heritage and legacy

Lincoln considered the holy Bible

To be God's greatest gift to man

Which if we'd obediently follow His plan

Will bring countless and innumerable blessings

To our beloved homeland

As we discern right from wrong

Make a solemn sacrifice

To under gird future generations

By cleaving to that which is right

Remembering mercy bears richer fruits

Than strict heartless justice

Because none of us are guiltless

Purity does breed immortality

As we consider all things personally

Before projecting them on others presumptuously

Such were the errors

Of the masters of slavery

Who forgot the Lord

From whom all blessings flow

Instead they preferred to bring men low

Shackle them in bondage and servitude

Yet their plot

Lincoln did not evade you

For God had anointed you

To see and say

To eliminate slavery

Day by day

To once again in our nation

Relay

A moral foundation

By which we forever say

'In God We Trust"

For in our darkest hours

Confidence in King Jesus

Is a must

Hence inscribed on all currency and coin

Are these prophetic words

To strengthen us within

Unify us in purpose

Beyond political discourse

Overcome the worse divorce

Delicately drawn near

To pray together and hear

Though today many are forlorn

Beaten down by sorrow

Self-seeking leaders

A national tragedy

In such times

To us Lincoln you remain

A voice for humanity

That we forever might live

In truth and liberty

Stand against every national enemy

In loving unity

One God fearing country.|Al Sharpton became famous for his role in the Tawana Brawley, phony rape charge, in 1987.

Sharpton loudly proclaimed that a group of white men had abducted, raped and smeared feces on a 15-year-old black girl and that she was found lying in a garbage bag.

Sharpton accused a young prosecutor named Steve Pagones and challenged Pagones to sue. Pagones did just that and was awarded $345,000 for defamation.

In 1991, a seven year old black child was accidentally killed by a jewish driver in Brooklyn. Sharpton organized a march through a jewish neighborhood.

A jewish student, was confronted by a mob shouting "Kill the Jews!" Yankel Rosenbaum studying to become a rabbi was stabbed to death.

In 1995 a Jewish owner of Freddie's Fashion Mart had his rent raised by the United House of Prayer, a large black landlord in Harlem.

The owner in turn raised his rent on a black tenant. Sharpton organized a group of protesters who spit on customers and hurled racial insults while Sharpton warned: We will not stand by, "and allow them to move this brother so that some white interloper can expand his business."

Eventually, one of the protestors, entered Freddy's, shot four employees and set the store on fire.

Seven employees died in the fire.

In 2004 Sharpton sought the Democratic nomination. Did he apologize for any of this? Of course not.

Besides his other slurs against whites and Jews, when the seven year old boy was killed, Sharpton talked of "diamond merchants" with "the blood of innocent babies" on their hands. which he obviously intended for Jews.

Sharpton to this day is afforded the same platform as individuals of integrity. That platform includes regular appearances on Hannity & Colmes and on Bill O'Reilly's show.

This is truly sickening.

Black authors Shelby Steele and Thomas Sowell of the Hoover Institute have written and discussed race at some length pointing out the degree of distortion taking place regarding racial matters in America.

In a recent column, Mr. Steele said: "we must acknowledge one of the most profound achievements in recent human history: the death of white supremacy. Here was an event far more world-altering than the collapse of communism, and yet, out of a truly extraordinary historical blindness, it has gone utterly unnoticed. Possibly it was an event too conspicuous to see."

The flap over Imus's comment would serve America much better if debated on top TV shows by individuals who have earned and deserve respect, not by the likes of Al Sharpton.|People tend to believe in a whole host of things because it brings them some sort of sense of identity or comfort. For example, you might believe in white supremacy because you're Caucasian. You might believe the British are best, because you were born, raised and live in London. You believe in ghosts because that's evidence that there's a 'life' after death. You believe in God (or the gods) because that gives your life a meaningful purpose. You believe in astrology because you know what's in store for you and can make your plans accordingly. You believe in the positive curing powers of alternative medicine when you're diagnosed with a terminal illness and given just months to live.

But what does believe in aliens give you? At best, absolutely nothing positive. Aliens here and now don't really effect your world view - those set of beliefs or faiths that direct you in your every day-to-day affairs. There's nothing to be psychologically or emotionally gained from belief that little grey men are walking amongst us, maybe abducting us, unlike say your belief that you had better get your bills paid on time. Now that's important!

On the other hand, at worst, collectively there's a case for not believing in aliens - if aliens, then humans aren't the Big Cheese of the cosmos. If you believe in aliens you lower your own status (as well as the status of humanity as kingpins of the universe).

No one is born believing that ET has established an existence here, so that belief has got to have been acquired based on some sort of evidence.

Public opinion polls from the early to mid 1950's onwards have shown that a reasonable minority of the public seriously believe that aliens have been and/or are here now. That this is the case despite all the denial that come from the scientific community and other officialdom (the government and the military) is not in any way disputed. It's not usually a matter of "I want to believe" like Fox Mulder of "The X-Files" as rather 'I do believe'. Why such belief for such a lengthy period of time? There's not to be something suggestive that in this case officialdom is wrong - by intentional design or by incompetence.

UFOs vs. evidence for the ETH - there is no absolute smoking gun - yet. I'd be the first to acknowledge that. I'd suggest however that this is a case of where there's smoke, there's smoke. The fire has yet to be seen through the smoke. There however has got to be something suggestive about the nature of that smoke to drive lots of people, even some quite intelligent people, to accept the possibility of the UFO ETH. I mean the idea just didn't pop out of the ether - out of thin air. Something very suggestive is driving it. Yet, as noted, there has been no 'smoking gun' proof.

No UFO has crashed in Central Park, NYC - an event which couldn't be concealed or covered-up.

No ancient tomb or grave site has yielded or contained the remains of an obviously extraterrestrial entity.

No president or prime minister or equivalent has ever announced to the world that their country had alien technology in their possession.

No Little Green Man (LGM) has landed on the White House lawn and said in traditional fashion "Take me to your leader".

No exotic metallic alloys have ever been found incorporated in ancient structures like the Egyptian or the Mesoamerican pyramids.

ET can't telephone home because no mobile phones have been found by archaeologists on their digs and put on display in any museum's ancient history exhibits.

So belief in ET being here must stem not from one biggie piece of smoking gun evidence but from lots and lots and lots of little clues. That's much like whodunit murder mysteries. The guilty party is revealed at the end by someone piecing together a lot of small clues that, when put together, when everything falls into place, finally point the finger at the murderer.

We probably innately realise they (ET) should be here - there's nothing to prevent that from being the case, and lord knows that probability has been reinforced again, and again, and again in sci-fi books, short stories, movies and TV episodes, as well as documentaries of the written or visual kind. But just because they could be here, or should be here, doesn't translate immediately into belief that they are here. So, why do we believe (well many of us anyway) that that's the case?

Well for starters there are personal experiences - your own UFO sighting(s) or abduction(s). However, relatively few of us actually have such a personal interaction or close encounter, and in any event personal experiences are well, personal. But if you had one (or more), well a common phrase is "I know what I saw". Therefore, I believe.

More likely as not it's the sum total of all the eyewitnesses testimony of others, over six decades worth, worldwide, the sort that is commonplace not only in our daily conversations with others ("I saw Jane Doe and Joe Blow together at lunch last week") but in legal proceedings in courtrooms - though apparently not allowable in the courtroom of science which demands a body on the slab in the lab.

For eyewitnesses to be convincing, they need to be credible observers, so we're not talking here about alcoholic bums lying in the gutter; elementary school dropouts who couldn't tell the difference between astrology and astronomy if their life depended on it; New Age hippies zonked out on the latest designer or party drug; and those, who through no fault of their own are mentally disabled in one way or another.

No, what the great unwashed know of credible UFO sightings come from pilots (military and civilian); astronauts, police officers, professionals like health professionals and medical doctors, lawyers, engineers and yes, even scientists; politicians (okay, maybe not pollies who can't even lie straight in bed); as well as the average citizen whose word and credibility wouldn't be under any strain under any other set of circumstance. Even used car salesmen and real estate agents usually qualify as credible observers, though most of all tend to be those people who spend a lot of time outdoors/outside and thus are quite aware or familiar with the sky and associated optical and atmospheric phenomena.

Now if each and every eyewitness to a UFO event were a lone witness, that would or should ring alarm bells and delight the sceptics. Of course that's not even remotely the case. Not only do you often get a group of witnesses, but often two or more eyewitnesses in two or more separately placed locations - independent verification of events by multi-witnesses from multi-sites.

There's another form of independent verification. The presence of physical evidence is often, not usually, but often, left behind. UFOs can and do have an impact on the environment. If UFOs are solid objects and some come close to ground level and even land, you'd expect broken tree branches perhaps and ground traces. That box is ticked. You'd expect UFOs, if they can be seen, to be photographed (still pictures) and filmed (motion pictures), evidence even more valuable in the pre CGI and Photoshop era. If UFOs don't cloak all the time, you'd expect some radar cases - that's another box ticked. There have been documented cases of people suffering ill effects after a UFO close encounter, sometimes extreme effects akin to radiation exposure. Electromagnetic (EM) effects, like automobile engines cutting out when in the near vicinity of a UFO have been documented more often than is necessary to establish the reality and credibility of the phenomenon.

What becomes of all those UFO eyewitness reports (sometimes backed up by physical evidence)? Well those qualified to do so, scientists, military personnel (because UFOs were once a national security issue) and others so qualified try to come up with a prosaic answer. They don't come up with an acceptable answer in all the cases. So then there are the UFO unknowns - the actual hardcore, bona-fide unidentified flying objects. Even the most hardened of UFO sceptics acknowledges that between 5% and 10% of UFO reports turn into hardcore unidentified sightings. When translated over six plus decades, worldwide, that's one hell of a lot of mysterious residue one has to come to terms with. Why science and scientists, presumably charged with the responsibility of exploring the unknown and figuring out how things work, choose to ignore this massive pile of hardcore unknowns is quite beyond me. I mean if each and every UFO report that came in was quickly explained away, well everyone should and probably would be sceptical when yet another report hit the fan. But that's not the case.

The fact, as noted above, what most sceptics readily acknowledge, is that between 5 and 10 percent of all reported UFO incidents remain unidentified after investigation by those qualified to do so. This fact apparently excites the scientific, astrobiology, and SETI (Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence) communities not one jot. But, if SETI received out of all radio signals, 5% to 10% unexplained radio signals, ("WOW" signals), that of course would set the SETI community abuzz.

In a similar vein, if 5 to 10 percent of particle interactions were unexplainable by the current standard model of particle physics, that would set the physics community abuzz without question.

If the speed of light varied ever so slightly 5% to 10% of the times it were measured, the special relativity community would be agog, and extremely interested.

If 5 to 10 percent of galaxies showed a discrepancy between their red-shifts and their distances, that would set the cosmology community abuzz.

So, why the big scientific yawn over the apparently bona fide UFO's unidentified percentage? Perhaps it might take sociologists who study the sociology of science to pin that one down. There's a mystery just begging for serious attention here that has the potential for massive ramifications, not just scientific ones.

Now the hardcore unknowns aren't a 'possible this' or a 'probable that' or maybe yet some other thing(s) that acquaint yet again to something in terms of a prosaic explanation. The experts haven't a clue what these 5% to 10% of UFOs are.

So, faced with these hardcore bona fide unknowns, the public focuses on the ETH. That's understandable as how many other possible explanations for the hardcore can there be?

Okay, maybe it's time travellers from our future as one alternative. But then hardcore UFO unknowns aren't clustered around significant historical events that would be must sees - the bread-and-butter of that industry - to tourists and historians from our future.

An early UFO ETH theory was that UFOs were actual living organisms who lived in outer space but now and again would dip into our atmosphere. No biologist could actually explain how such creatures could survive, far less thrive, in the harsh conditions of outer space.

Some suggest that the hardcore represent some sort of totally new natural phenomena, except there's no even theoretical underpinning for new natural phenomena, and after six decades, well that's a total failure to come to terms with an easy way out of the hardcore mess. However, natural phenomena wouldn't exhibit intelligent behaviour in any event, which the hardcore UFOs do. That's why they often tend to be the hardcore.

Now one might argue that if nine out of ten UFO reports turn out to be prosaic, then the final tenth one will to. That point of view (POV) is seemingly logical, but really illogical. If your footie team wins nine grand finals on the trot, well that's no reason another team won't win the next one. Toss heads nine times in a row - the tenth toss is still 50/50, not 100% in favour of heads. Nine out of ten of anything tells you zip about the tenth occurrence.

The mention of eyewitness testimony of course brings to the fore visual images. For visual images to really be effective, they have got to be captured in some form or other. Still photographs and motion pictures come to mind here. There are of course a fair few photographs; alas fewer motion pictures of UFOs - no bona fide examples of actual LGM (the "G" could stand for 'Gray") - are present and accounted for. However, films and photographs and fakery are too often associated. But even real motion pictures of 'lights in the sky', albeit unidentified 'lights in the sky' don't have quite the same visual impact as some of those from our historical past - not film, but something more durable. It's a lot harder to explain away images from ancient history - images often carved out of stone or carved into stone.

For example, there are the famous statues on Easter Island. Well, the representations are human, but not quite human enough. If they are a representation of ancestor worship (as is commonly cited) then either the ancestors were very strange or else the stone masons were rather poor carvers, or they were one of the first to have invented abstract art. There's something screwy somewhere in attributing the Easter Island statues as representing a strictly human form. If not strictly human, what's the alternative?

You have some of the ancient Egyptian 'gods' with jackal and falcon heads - how many humans do you see down at your local shopping mall with animal heads?

The Nazca Lines are world famous. They basically are etchings (representing various animals and other objects) made in the dry desert plains in Southern Peru that, much like crop circles, can only be really appreciated from the air. In fact they were only discovered in the 1930's from aircraft flying overhead. There's no doubt humans constructed the lines, which took a lot of time, effort and energy, but to what purpose? Certainly they were not runways for flying saucers and astronomical alignments and associated explanations fail too. Since they were clearly meant to be seen from the air and since we're talking about their construction some 400 to 650 years AD - sort of our pre-flight era - then the most logical explanation is that they were art works for the sky gods to see and appreciate.

Tassili n'Ajjer is located in the Sahara Desert in southern Algeria. It's famous for its prehistoric art rock paintings, many of which are really, really weird. One archaeologist dubbed one such art work the 'Great Martian God'. Humans drew the various images of - well what exactly? Many of the images certainly don't depict anything terrestrial that's for sure. Just plug in the term 'Tassili' into Google Images for examples, and decide for yourself.

Visoki Deani is a major Serbian Orthodox Christian monastery located in Kosovo. Within are various murals. On the "The Crucifixion" fresco, painted in 1350, objects similar to UFOs can be found. They represent two comets that look like space ships, with two men inside of them, and are often cited by those interested in 'ancient astronauts'. The images are certainly striking. You have to decide for yourself if these images are representing really real 'ancient astronauts' aerial craft.

Cylinder Seals date from about 3500 BC in Mesopotamia and surrounding regions. They tell 'picture stories' and were engraved on cylinders that could be rolled onto a flat surface like wet clay. The interesting bit is that not only are some images clearly mythological, showing dragons and various gods, but some images are clearly astronomical. Celestial objects abound. No less a scientist than the late Dr. Carl Sagan, is on record (in his co-authored book "Intelligent Life in the Universe") as noting that some cylinder seals clearly show various extra-solar planetary systems, often in association with specific deities.

There are many, many ancient figurines or statues showing beings something less than what we'd call 'human'. Of the lot, I personally found some of the most striking to be male and female clay figurines dating from the archaeological period called the Obed time or Obed horizon in Mesopotamia, roughly fourth millennium BC, with insect-like heads or at least eyes. In fact the eyes are very striking, and certainly representing nothing terrestrial - they remind me of the modern depiction of the eyes of the UFO-related greys.

Speaking of which, there was that immense psychological subconscious reaction to the face of the 'Grey' on the cover of Whitley Strieber's book "Communion".

The Piri Reis Map is another well known case of something that really shouldn't be, but is. Piri Reis was a Turkish admiral and cartographer who strutted his stuff in the early 1500's. The famous map in question shows in considerable detail the coastlines of the Americas, greater detail than exploration of that era would have been possible, plus the opposite side of the Atlantic (which, okay, was pretty well known), but most impressive, parts of coastal Antarctica, a continent which hadn't yet been discovered (though highly speculated about). However, in fairness, there are enough errors that sceptics can easily dismiss this as evidence of 'ancient astronauts' - close, but no cigar.

Then there's the popular literature. There was the immense popularity of Erich Von Daniken's ancient astronaut books - they really rang quite a responsive chord around the world. UFO books tend to sell well too, for example, as noted above Whitley Strieber's "Communion" and sequels; also Budd Hopkins "Missing Time" and later works. For people to shell out their hard earned bucks for books that are on the fringe of science and acceptability - well, there's got to be some sort of responsive chord driving this.

In conclusion, I want to believe? Indeed I do - believe that is!|With the latest AL MVP award handed out to Minnesota's Joe Mauer, it's hard to imagine someone taking the place of the dynamic star catcher. He wins virtually every batting title and plays the most demanding position on the field better than any other catcher in the game. Does anyone have a chance? Every season, stars emerge and others return to form. In 2010, several players are looking to challenge Mauer's supremacy on satellite TV. Here are five to watch all season long.

1. Paul Konerko, Chicago White Sox. Konerko's monstrous start to the 2010 campaign has people wondering when the slugger is going to quit. On pace for some 70 home runs, chances are he'll cool off. Ozzie Guillen and company are hoping he doesn't, however, as Konerko and Andruw Jones have been responsible for most of the club's run production. Watch Konerko on White Sox HD networks as they challenge the Twins.

2. Robinson Cano, NY Yankees. While most analysts look to the other half of the Yankees' double play combination (Derek Jeter) when lining up MVP candidates, Cano is having the type of year which could finally bring the spotlight to his side of the diamond. Hitting close to.400 and slugging home runs at a frightening pace, Cano has the edge on mashers like Konerko for his excellent glove work at second base. Few players have as much talent as Cano - this year might be his for it all to come together. Follow him on the YES HD network.

3. Evan Longoria, Tampa Bay Rays. Another feared AL East bat on the short list of MVP candidates is the Rays' 3B Evan Longoria. Sporting Gold Glove caliber defense and offensive stats to make pitchers cringe, it seems like a Longoria MVP trophy is only a Joe Mauer down season away. On top of that, it appears that the Rays and Yankees will battle all summer long on satellite TV for first place in the Majors' toughest division. See if Longoria and the Rays can trade punches with the defending champs.

4. Miguel Cabrera, Detroit Tigers. Big Miggy had some personal trouble at the end of 2009, but his start in 2010 has showed he hasn't let anything stick with him. Still hitting around.360 and anchoring a somewhat inconsistent lineup, Cabrera is one of the toughest situational hitters in the game. Follow him on Tigers HD networks.

5. Kendry Morales, Anaheim Angels. The switch-hitting Cuban slugger put his name on the MLB blackboard in 2009 and it has not come down for a second since. Morales has power to all fields, few weaknesses at the plate and hits homers in bunches. Mark Teixeira may be the only other AL 1st baseman with that sort of arsenal, but Morales has more room to grow (it would be hard for Teixeira to outdo his 2009 numbers). Watch him keep the Angels in contention with the MLB Extra Innings Package.|To get back to American slavery: the first record of enslavement of Africans by colonial Americans is from Virginia, in 1619. A Dutch ship called "The White Lion" had captured 20 enslaved Africans in a battle with a Spanish ship that had been taking them to Mexico. This Dutch ship, after being damaged in a storm, came to shore in Jamestown, Virginia.

The first English colony in America was in need of able-bodied workers, as it had lost many to disease, malnutrition and the ongoing war with Native Americans - otherwise called "Indians." The Dutch ship needed food, and the settlers needed workers, so the human cargo was traded in for supplies. This established the beginning of black people's slavery in the United States.

But at first, the white citizens of Jamestown, who had themselves fled oppression in Britain, treated the first African "immigrants" in Virginia as just indentured servants. As with the white European indentured servants, they were freed after a set period and given the use of land and supplies by their former owners. One black man, Anthony Johnson, eventually became a landowner and a slave owner himself. But the problem with indentured servitude was that former such workers usually did not become as prosperous as Johnson. Very few black people were slave owners, along with some Native Americans and others, as slave owners were predominantly white people.

The best lands in the tidewater regions were in the hands of wealthy plantation families by 1650, and their former servants began to take on the aspects of a permanent underclass. Bacon's Rebellion, an act of hostility by poor laborers and farmers, proved that these people could pose a dangerous threat to wealthy landowners. So Americans decided that by switching to straight-out "chattel slavery," new white laborers and small farmers would be mostly limited to people who could afford the immigration process and support themselves later, such as the white Irish laborers of the 19th century.

Meanwhile, large plantation owners and some others could use the cheap labor brought by legal chattel slavery, although this would subject black people to obscenities galore. And the South has never forgotten the productivity of "slavery times," mounting movement after movement to make "the South rise again" and reestablish the practice, either by keeping black people illiterate, or otherwise persecuting them.

Although many white southerners frown on racism nowadays, such people are still ever-present, and they occasionally press for "State's Rights" above and beyond the federal statutes. As northerners, this attitude perplexed the Boys of Birmingham, although they couldn't at first fathom the Civil Rights Movement, either. It took a long time for them to grow an appreciation of how badly "colored people" were suffering - and how much they wanted to lead freer, more productive lives.

The ideal on the part of the white South was to keep "coloreds" subjugated indefinitely, by using "State's Rights" as a kind of tactic, where the southern states would each independently decide whether slavery was legal. The Ku Klux Klan, the name of which may be founded on the Greek word for circle, "kuklos," was formed in 1866 by a small group of wealthy white landowners. This was shortly after the South lost the Civil War. The ideal of the Klan was to keep blacks in a morbid state of fear and terror for their lives, or in other words to keep them rigidly oppressed.

They fostered klaverns, or societies of individual "ghouls," in order to subject their opposition to threats of dismemberment, burning, lynching, whipping and other often spontaneous acts of violence. This is probably the primary reason why Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. led the Civil Rights Movement as a continuing act of nonviolence, to oppose the lunacies of the Klan, which used "supernatural threats" against their opponents. Being vengeance oriented, they dressed up as the ghosts of the southern Civil War dead, replete with white satin sheets on themselves and their horses. Their cause was white supremacy, the belief that white people are the superior race.

Secrecy, darkness and hiding their faces were also key components to this often violent group, which still exists today, although they now claim they too are "nonviolent." They talk about forming all-white communes, and picking up roadside litter. It looks like they lost "the battle" a long time ago. But they still advocate white supremacy, the belief that only white people are the "right people," and yearn for the establishment of an all-white society in America. But their man specialty is the persecution of Black Americans.

On their side, whites in the South originally had to worry about reprisals from their very large slave population, and there were some sporadic battles, involving loss of life by both white and black people. Also, the KKK was involved in the "Indian Wars," being one long attempt to hold American territory solely on behalf of its white population. Also, many southern apologists have cited northern lack of attention to their presumed problems with the South's growing population of Negros as the primary cause of their white southern hostilities. As has been said before by the white southern proponents of slavery themselves, the white South was fervently trying to preserve a "lost cause": the reinstitution of black people slavery in an all-white people owned America.

Read the next article in this series, "What Helped Cause the Death of Slavery?" and the other articles in this long article series about why racism was and is so prevalent in the American South.|Wright, was born Richard Nathaniel Wright on Rucker's Plantation, Mississippi, the son of Nathaniel Wright, an illiterate sharecropper, and Ella Wilson, a schoolteacher in September 1908.. He was in fact their first child.

Richard Wright's father, Nathan, was born shortly before 1880 to Nathaniel Wright, a freed slave who farmed a plot of land that had been given to him at the end of the Civil War.

His mother, Ella, was born in 1883 and got married to Nathan in 1907 despite her parent's disapproval.. Ella then gave up school teaching to join her husband to work on the farm. Her father, Richard Wilson, born in 1847 served in the U.S Navy in 1865 and then grew disillusioned as a result of a bureaucratic error which deprived him of his pension. Her mother, Margaret Bolton Wilson, of Irish, Scottish, American Indian and African descent, was virtually white in appearance. A house slave before the Emancipation, she later became a midwife nurse, a devoted Seventh -day Adventist, and the strict head of her Natchez household including eight surviving children.

Wright's life conformed to the stock pattern of the American success myth. His early life which was harsh and filled with hunger and fear gave him much preparation for his later intellectual outlook and the acute social and political consciousness of his writing. He moved from impoverished and educationally barren early years to legendary achievements as a favored literary touchstone and ancestor figure.

When he was only three and his younger brother, Leon, barely one year old, unable to care for them while working on the farm, their mother took them to live with their grandparents in Natchez. His father rejoins the family there and finds work in a sawmill. Now 4 years old and living with his whole extended family with a bed-ridden grandmother, Richard starts giving vent to much of his childish curiosity and pranks. Curious to know what could be the result, he lit the white curtains which led to the house being half engulfed in fire before escaping to hide under the house to avoid the likely punishment. But his father discovers him there and beats him almost to death.

His family soon moved to Memphis, Tennessee by steam boat. There they lived in a tenement. Whilst his father was working as a night porter it became necessary for him to sleep well during the day. So Richard and his brother are strictly warned against making noise.. But Richard saw as his license to defy the rule and thence his father's authority, when as a stray kitten begins to make noise, his father yells, " kill that damn thing. " Taking him literally to challenge him, he strangles it to death. But his mother forces him to feel the moral horror involved in taking life when by ordering him to bury and pray for it in the evening. Disgusted and afraid, Richard buries it but runs away when she forces him to ask for the Lord's forgiveness.

While in Memphis, his father abandoned them leaving his mother to support them on her own. An illiterate sharecropper and mill worker, he abandoned his family when Richard was six. Wright grew up in poverty, with hunger gnawing at the entrails of the family as they did not have much to eat. He recalls in Black Boy feeling hunger nudging his ribs, twisting his empty guts until they ached. He would then grow dizzy until his vision dimmed. Richard begins to associate his pangs of hunger with the image of his father. They are now forced as well to be staying often at homes of relatives. His mother, Ella Wilson, moved with her family to Memphis, where she found employment as a cook for white families.

Richard is now left to face the realities of a violent society when sent by his mother to do grocery shopping. Whenever he goes past a corner, a gang of white boys would rush at him, grab him, snatch the basket and take the money from him. On returning home, his mother gives him more money which the white boys again steal on his second attempt. On his return, his mother gives him a large stick along with the money, kicking him immediately out of the house with a stiff warning not to come back without the goods. So this time round he faced the gang stoutly and resolutely, blindly throwing the stick around them and thus hitting them all over. They flee away in fear thus allowing him time to return home with the grocery he had already bought at last.

Richard gets into series of scrapes and mischief-making whilst his mother is at work trying to eke out a living for them. He joins neglected black children peering through holes at the naked bodies of adults using the toilets. He also loiters around the saloon begging for money from its patrons. In this way he soon gets initiated into drinking by the men who with the offer of further monetary inducement would get much entertainment from him. His curious and inquiring mind would never rest as it goes on in quest of new knowledge. Having learned to read and write, his inquiring mind now drifts into unraveling the enigma of race relations between blacks and whites. He was for instance puzzled as to why his grandmother was white when he was black and if the white man who was beating the black boy in the neighborhood was the boy's father, as in his mind only a father has such unquestionable right to do that..

In September 1915, Richard begins school at Howe Institute. He learns new expletives and profanities whilst listening to the older boys here. On returning home he starts exhibiting his newly found knowledge by scribbling the newly acquired words in soap on windows in the neighborhood. His mother discovering this forces him to go outside and wash every word off.

Richard's mother now very religious would drag him often to Sunday school. One Sunday evening, Richard's envy and spite is aroused at the preacher whom his mother had invited for dinner, who seemed to be greedily devouring all the luscious fried chicken without the slightest intention of leaving Richard any that no longer able to hide his disgust, he shouts out thus infuriating his mother.

Richard's mother falls seriously ill in 1916. His grandmother comes over for a while to care for the family. After the grandmother has returned home, Richard and his brother are placed in the Settlement House, Methodist Orphanage in Memphis run by Miss Simon. Miss Simon adheres to a strict policy of disallowing visits from their mother in order to prevent them from being spoiled by too much attention. Richard finding it boring and unable to do the chores required of him would often stand crying. He eventually attempts to run away but is intercepted and brought back by some white policemen.Their mother's partial paralysis was what caused their temporary placement in this orphanage as well as necessitated the family to keep shuttling from relative to relative

Richard and his mother confronts Richard's father for the second time out of court this time for him to provide their support. His father who was accompanied by another woman presumably the one who had enticed him out of his home tries to be endeared to Richard who recoils from them in disgust and shame..

A relatively pleasant summer is however spent at 1107 Lynch Street in Jackson, Mississippi where the maternal grandparents now live, before going with his mother and brother to Elaine, Arkansas, to live with Richard's favorite aunt, Aunty Maggie, his mother's younger sister, and her husband, Silas Hoskins.

At Granny's two-storied white-painted house a black schoolteacher, Ella, of whom Richard was half afraid and with whom he was half infatuated was engaged. Her appetite for reading further aroused Richard's quest for literature. One day when Richard found her avidly reading,he asks her what she was reading. She thus starts telling him the fairy tale of Bluebeard from 1001 Arabian Nights. But this had to be done behind Granny's back as she was known to be violently opposed to stories which she had condemned as "the Devil's work." Granny's sudden materialization there disrupted the reading of the story thus filling Richard who was already absorbed into the story with a sense of emptiness and hunger. But Ella was soon to be dismissed. This happens whilst bathing the boys, when upon Granny ordering Richard to bend over to allow her to scrub his behind and without the least thought Richard tells her to "kiss back there" when through. Concluding those were emanations from the stories Ella was infusing in his mind, Granny forces her to move out of the house immediately.

Richard who has been having a bitter experience of hunger and has as a result been always yearning for food is surprised to find so much food on the ladder at the Hoskins. For Uncle Hoskins owns a saloon catering to blacks working in the sawmills who have a great deal of economic success and are much better off in life. Richard often steals dinner rolls from the table and hides them in his pockets and around the house. One day Uncle Hoskins takes Richard on a buggy ride claiming that he is going to drive into the river until the water level gets very high. Frightened, Richard attempts to jump out. Back on land, he refuses to listen or speak to him.

One morning, Uncle Hoskins who always left for work in the evenings to tend to the saloon, fails to return home. White men who coveted his successful liquor business, it is later learnt, shot him. The family on hearing this quickly pack their clothes and dash into a farmer's wagon and without according him even a funeral hasten off to West Helena, Arkansas. They then return to Jackson with Aunt Maggie to live with the Wilson's. Here Richard sees a lot of soldiers as well as a chain gang.

Richard cannot cope with Granny's strict religious rules which forbids amongst others working on Saturdays, when they the Seventh Day Adventists go to church. This forces him to flee to West Helena where they live in shanties and where the boys visit grocery shops belonging to Jews whom the neighborhood children often sing lewd and racist songs against. Here, Richard's Mother and Aunt Maggie work as cooks for whites at daytime.

Richard's eagerness to know much about the curious sex trade going on next door leads to his standing up on a chair to peer through the peep hole to see the naked partners inside the other room. But Richard toppling off the chair startles the landlady and her guests who thus get wise to the tricks of the miscreant boy. As Richard's mother could not yield to the landlady's demand that Richard be punished, they move to another house on the same street.

Aunt Maggie and the mysterious and shadowy Professor Mathews are compelled to relocate up North to help Aunt Maggie's new husband escape detection for murder. Her departure reduced the household income considerably, thus accentuating and prolonging Richard's experience of hunger. This forces him to try unsuccessfully to sell his puppy, Betsy, for as low as a dollar. When his mother finally secures a higher paying job she sends him to school. One day class is let out early as the whistles and bells swell the air announcing the end of the war. For the first time he looks up and sees a plane which he mistakes for a bird.

Richard now older is associating with a gang of older Black Boys who share a "learned" hostility toward whites and the "degrees of values" assigned to race. He analyzes a typical afternoon with his gang, their conversation, their attitudes, and their ideologies. The gang's dialogs are on how "the culture of one black household was thus transmitted to another black household."

With this gang, Richard often engages in fights against white boys, throwing rocks and bottles and wounding each other. One day such a fight almost cost him his life causing his mother to caution him seriously against fighting whites.

One day Richard and his brother found their mother in a comatose state. After calling the neighbors and a doctor, they discovered a stroke had paralyzed her entire left side. On the arrival of their grandmother they moved her to Jackson, Mississippi where all her relatives have gathered.

Meanwhile, Richard has stopped eating and now sleepwalks. Relatives decide to separate them so as to enable the two brothers to live separately with two different families. Leon moves to Detroit to live with Aunt Maggie up north to finish his schooling. Richard chooses to live with Uncle Clarke in Greenwood. There he is able to attend school, and resume his fight for supremacy with fellow kids. After standing his ground well during one such fight he gains acceptance by his peers.

One evening, Mr. Burton the owner and former occupant of the house stops by and reveals how his dead son had once lived in Richard's room sleeping in Richard's bed. Richard pledged not to sleep there ever again for fear that the boy's ghost will come to haunt him. But his uncle did not allow him to sleep elsewhere. Soon he starts having insomnia and nightmares, this affecting his performance at school considerably.

Richard finds his Uncle's household calm and orderly but his aunt and her husband cold and unsympathetic. This culminates in his dropping in his sleepiness whilst taking the water pail to fill outside one evening. Wet and tired, he lets out a string of swear words which Aunt Jody heard and the Uncle later that night thrashes him thoroughly for. He then tells them he wishes to return to Jackson which he does indeed the next Saturday.

Instead of returning to school, Richard stays at home watching his mother's worsening condition. She is eventually taken away to undergo an operation in Clarksdale. It is then that Richard realizes that she has indeed gone out of his life. For he now ceases to react to her. His feelings have been frozen. This as well as his own suffering developed a greater interest in intellectual activities which made him come alive. But then his mother begins to show signs of recovering from paralysis. Then a sudden relapse caused by a cerebral blood clot sets in which leaves her virtually crippled. Her illness impoverishes a family already sufficiently hurt by the rheumatism that has rendered the Grandfather unable to work.

An ardent member of the Seventh Day Adventist Church, Richard's grandmother forces him into a life suffused with religion and prayer. Her religious beliefs forbids the serving or eating of meat thus further aggravating Richard's hunger. Granny enforces this rule with religious zeal to ensure that the house remains free from any sinful person lest the rest of them are brought down. So they try to persuade Richard to "confess" to her God and have him enrolled in the religious school where Aunt Addie is the only teacher. Only nine years older than Richard, Aunt Addie is another rigid disciplinarian who is often at odds with him flogging him wrongly at school for littering the floor with walnuts and even at home persistently beating him until a stand off ensues between them. In spite of such a thick ring weighing him down tom submission,Richard refuses to be committed to Granny's church even when she goes round his age mates to woo him. Wright rebels against the rules and practices of the religion, including its diet. He soon finds himself opposed to his family in general except for his ill mother.|Acute inflammation is medicated cabbage leaves in Europe. Crashed cabbage is placed in a cabbage leaf and is then place in the affected areas to lessen distress. It is as well excellent in alleviating agonizing engorged in breastfeeding woman.

Cabbage are applied as curing agent for constipation, whooping cough, hot flashes, common colds, frostbite. It utilization includes extracting of its juices, crashing of leaves as ointment and decoction.

Poultice is traditionally applied to cure wounds, burns and scalds, boils and carbuncles, bruises and sprains, ulcers, blisters, cold, sores, shingles, bites and stings. Swollen and aching joints are benefited by its anti-inflammatory action and assists in alleviating the pain of toothaches, headaches and migraines.

Cabbage poultice were applied to the throat which helps alleviate tonsillitis and laryngitis. Utilizing as poultice is by cracking its mid rib of leaf and have it iron and place in the area to be treated while still hot.

Fresh juices can be applied as diuretic and antiseptic for the urinary tract and to alleviate fluid retension and reduce or avoid kidney stones, arthritis and gout. Gargles created from cabbage juice are applied for sore throats and with a mixture of hot water, it is superior for exhausted eyes.

Due to its iron and chlorophyll content, it been widely applied to cure anemia. It is as well applied to encourage milk production in a breastfeeding mothers. It is traditionally applied in Russian to stimulate proper digestion and alleviate chronic constipation by taking one-half glass of cabbage juice blended with salt before every meal.

CABBAGE Cabbage is a well-built vegetable crop, cultivated globally which derived from Western Europe and was cultivated within 200 years ago. Prior to its cultivation, its uses prevail in the application as medical herbs. Presently, cabbage is known as vegetables that primarily utilized in various culinary applications. It is a biennial or perennial having a broad stem, gray-green leaves, and four-petaled flowers. Within the first year, it generates a wholly widened terminal bud that forms into the common cabbage head.

Mythology has to say that cabbages came into being from the tears of Lycurgus. One day, anxious at seeing mortals swallow until they were drunk, he had all the grape vines pulled up, to be substituted by the cabbages that sprang up from his tears. Over time, the vines grew back but the Greeks and Romans thought that cabbage had the supremacy to fend off alcoholic vapors. They would even consume a few leaves to prepare for large banquets at which etiquette dictated that the host refill guests' cups liberally.

Cabbage has three major classes: green, red and Savoy. The color of green cabbage ranges from pale to dark green while red cabbage has leaves that are either crimson or purple with white veins running through. Both green and red cabbage has smooth textured leaves. The leaves of Savoy cabbage are more ruffled and yellowish-green in color.

SCIENTIFIC HEALTH BENEFITS Scientific study conducted and reveals that cabbage has significant benefits to the following:

Optimize cells detoxification or cleansing ability. Phytonutrients in crucifers like cabbage performs in much profound rate. These essentially indicate genes to raise its generation of enzymes involved in detoxification. Promote gastrointestinal health. Isothiocyanates, which include sulforaphane and indole-3-carbinol, and are not only potent inducers of the liver's Phase II enzymes, which detoxify carcinogens Promote women's well being. Indole-3-carbinole (I3C) has been found to enhance estrogen detoxification and lessens the occurrence of breast cancer. Peptic ulcer treatment. The excellent glutamine content which is an amino acid is the preferred fuel for the cells that line the stomach and small intestine, is probably for cabbage juices efficiency in curing ulcers. Protective against Alzheimer's Disease. Polyphenols which is abundant in red cabbage and is known as antioxidant, can safeguard brain cells opposing the damage effect of amyloid-beta protein. Cardiovascular benefits. Minute absorption of just 100 micromoles per liter, a phytonutrient found in cruciferous vegetables, indole-3-carbinol, lowers liver cells' discharge of the cholesterol transporter, apolipoproteinB-100 by 56%! Apolipoprotein B-100 (apoB) is the main carrier of LDL cholesterol to tissues, and high levels have been linked to plaque formation in the blood vessels.

FOOD SUPPLEMENTS

DIM PLUS A product of Nature's Way. Contains diindolylmethane, a phytonutrient found in cruciferous vegetables including broccoli, brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower and kale.

Raises the rate of "favorable" estrogens (2-hydroxy-estrogen) while decreasing the rate of "less favorable" estrogens (16-hydroxyestrogen).

NERVES AND TENSION TINCTURE - 2 ft. oz Nerves & Tension Tincture was created to soothe the nervous system. It is a mixture of six helpful herbs that are considered useful in reducing tension and calming nerves.

Suggested Dosage or Use: 6-12 drops, 3 times per day.|When some people ask me which portable printer is the 'best' they think I'll be stumped and unable to answer. Nope. There are admittedly perhaps two competitors for the title, the iP90v (which is a refreshed version of the iP90) and then there's the iP100.

I'll cut to the chase right away, the iP100 is the best and I'll tell you why. Looking at things from purely a technical perspective to begin with it can print to much high resolutions than any another portable printer I've seen. This includes both inkjet and thermal-based printing mechanisms, and you can expect to print at 600 x 600 dots per inch for black and white, and 9600 x 2400 dpi for color. These two figures are incredible, and if you're not a printing nerd like me then around 4300 x 1200 dpi for color is the average resolution for a standard glossy 4 x 6 inch photograph. So the photographs it's producing are incredibly detailed.

But don't think this is just a photo printer, it's an everyday print too - its 600 x 600 black and white dots per inch may not seem like a high figure especially when contrasted with the color amount but believe me when I say that when the numbers of dots in a single inch start getting that high you stop being able to tell the difference.

Its versatility is a key factor in its supremacy, if you want glossy business cards printing then this can do them. It can print most photo sizes from as small as business cards as mentioned to A4 sized photographs with 2-3 different sizes in between available too such as regular 4 x 6 inch photos.

Don't just think of this as some sort of photographers dream though, it can still whip out pages incredibly quickly (around 16 per minute for black and white and ten for color) which may not seem fast when you compare it to stationary printers. But this isn't a stationary printer, it weighs just 4.4 pounds and it measures just 12.7 x 2.4 x 7.2 inches across ticking both boxes with it comes to absolute portability - size and mass.

This Canon Portable Printer really is a pleasure to not only work with, but to review, and it is the best printer I've encountered. It's not just the best from Canon's perspective but when you lack at both the reliability of their main competitor - HP - it's a definite step up in terms of not only specifications but in reliability.

Most portable printers are simply not reliable enough, the early designs were simply scaled down inkjet printers give batteries. But what people don't understand is that inherently all inkjet printers have moving parts, and if you're moving moving parts then breaks can and do occur. What Canon's done is move away from simply scaling down their products to a mobile size, but they've gone out of their way to make the paper feeder less likely to jam and overall done a great job in creating a product which doesn't just look good from the technical specifications - but actually keeps well over the years performing time and time again.|It is the purpose of this article to provide the general reader with a comprehensive picture of world's greatest civilization originating in Africa, a continent leading modern scholars today refer to it as the 'the cradle of civilization'. This chronology seeks to address sophisticated and intelligent readers who had never previously read anything serious about Africa, from the earliest times to the most recent. Most black people have lost their confidence, their true identity, because their history has been neglected, falsified and sometimes concealed. Diana Crawford Carson has been instrumental in the compilation of the chronology as she spent many hours synchronizing facts from many sources and verifying the language usage. Note: the century headings generally refer to the first date mentioned. Example: an entry covering the 14th to the 18th century will be found under '14th Century, 1300s'. The numbers in the left hand column are arbitrary, to help those using the indexes.

THE BLACK HOLOCAUST

The Black Holocaust is one of the more underreported tragedies in the annals of human history. The Black Holocaust refers to the millions of African lives lost during the centuries to slavery, colonization and oppression. The Black Holocaust refers to the horrors endured by millions of men, women, and children throughout the African Diaspora and the slave trade, from the 17th century, and continuing for at least the next two centuries. (In other guise, from and to many nations, the tragedy of slavery continues.) In sheer numbers, depth and brutality, it is a testimony to the worst elements of human behaviour and the strongest elements of survival.

Unknown numbers of Africans (possibly more than 4 million) died in slave wars and forced marches even before the other captives could be shipped to other nations. Within central Africa itself, the slave trade precipitated massive migrations; coastal tribes fled slave-raiding parties, and captured slaves were punished and transported, or were sold to slave owners in other regions in Africa.

The African slave trade and slave labour transformed the world. In Africa, slave trade stimulated the expansion of powerful West African kingdoms, made possible by the funds and guns provided by the income from the slave trade. In the Islamic world, African slave labour on plantations, in seaports, and within families expanded the commerce and trade of the Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf. In the Americas, both North and South, slave labour became the key component in trans-Atlantic agriculture and commerce, making possible the booming capitalist economy of the 17th and 18th centuries. The greatest demand came from Brazil (in South America) and the sugar plantations in the Caribbean islands.

84 THE RESISTANCE

Many Africans, such as Queen Nzingha of Angola and King Maremba of the Congo, fought valiantly, if vainly, against the European slavers and their African collaborators, without whom the massive numbers of men and women could not have been captured. Others resisted their captors by starting mutinies or even, in desperation, jumping overboard from slave ships during the horrendous 'middle passage' across the Atlantic Ocean. Many enslaved Africans destined for the Americas were subjected to a 'breaking in' process, often in the West Indies. Many of those captured, especially those of very strong spirit, were not 'broken', and managed to escape, eventually forming independent communities such as that of the Maroons ('escapees') in the West Indies. Some of these Maroon communities, numbering in the thousands in the Caribbean and South American, waged guerrilla warfare against slave hunters. If the escaped slave hunters were caught, they were terribly brutally executed.

85 THE DIASPORA: The forced and brutal dispersal of nearly thirty million Africans into foreign lands as slaves is the Black Diaspora. African slaves and their descendants carried with them their many skills and shared community values, rich cultural traditions, resiliency, and a resistance ethos that transformed and enriched the cultures they entered around the world. Thus, as African peoples were globally scattered, they carried their many strengths, and their traditions of cultural creativity and oral arts with them. This included a rich culture of music, using a wide variety of instruments, some primitive

and some very sophisticated, vibrant musical rhythms, dance, costumes in a rainbow of colours, almost an exploration of multi-coloured and diverse textures. There is enchanting use of repetition in poems, in the call-and-response of song, and story telling, all part of the rich traditions of most African peoples. African cultural musical and oral traditions

86 1789 A Nigerian slave from the Benin area of Nigeria, transported to the States (USA) as a young child, later achieved freedom and reached England. Somehow along the way, this young man, Equiano, learned to read and write, so that, once in freedom, he was able to write his autobiography. Perhaps as a matter of security, he wrote as Gustavo Vassa, though he used his true name in the title of his book, 'The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano'. This fascinating and painful book by Equiano (who was also called Igbo) was a clear exposition of his life as a slave, and then in freedom. One most interesting facet is Equiano's description of the difference between servitude under the African system, and the European 'chattel' slavery'. This was written in partial defence of the African system of servitude, as being more humane than the Europeans' system of slavery, ownership of another person. As possibly the first autobiography of a slave or former slave, this book aroused much interest. Equiano's book was followed by others, written by freed men, or smuggled out of slavery by those not yet free. All of these helped to stimulate the young but growing abolitionist movement in the States, and in Europe.

87 1790s The abolitionist movement (to abolish slavery) gained strength in England, and also in the USA.

88 1792 A slave uprising in Haiti (called Saint-Dominigue by the French), involving thousands of slaves, was led by Toussant L'Ouverture (1743-1803). His army eventually numbered 55,000 Africans, who waged guerrilla and frontal war against the British in Haiti for years.

89 Late 18th- mid 19th C European political, economic, and scientific interests stimulated another era of exploration, and a search for new markets. British explorer James Bruce reached the source of the Blue Nile in 1770, Scottish explorer Mungo Park explored (1795 and 1805) the course of the Niger River, Scottish missionary David Livingstone explored the Zambezi River and, in 1855, named Victoria Falls, and British explorers John Hanning Speke and James Augustus Grant, travelling downstream, and Sir Samuel White Baker, working upstream, located the sources of the Nile in 1863. Following the explorers (and sometimes preceding them) were Christian missionaries and European merchants.

90 1795 The British seized control of Cape Colony, South Africa, from the Dutch. 19th century, 1800s

91 1800s and throughout the century Poetry written in the language of the Swahili had long been focussed mostly on Arab (and Muslim) themes. The new Kiswahili poetry looked at, and used, traditional Bantu cultural material, such as their ritual songs, and more. The famed Swahili poet, Sayyid Abdallah Bin Masir, wrote a strong religious poem, 'The Soul's Awakening' ('Utendi wa Inkishafi'). This account of the fall of Pate, a city-state, presented a strong message about the futility of selfish earthly life.

92 1804 This was the year that the Black Republic of Haiti came into being.

93 1807 The Wilberforce Law inEngland banned the slave trade. (Slavery itself was banned in1835.)

94 1815 This was a time of continuing British immigration to South Africa,

some 20 years after wresting Cape Colony from the Dutch, and the settlement in which the British declared formal control over the former Dutch possession. Despite government resistance, the Boers began to move inland in search of better land and, after 1815, managed to escape British control.

95 1818-1828 Shaka, a strong Zulu chief, unified the Nguni peoples and forged an impressive fighting force, launching the 'mfecane' (wars of crushing and wandering; pronounced 'mm feh CAH neh) against the neighbouring black Africans and white Europeans throughout southern Africa. Shaka was assassinated in 1828, but Zulu power continued to rise.

96 1822 The American Colonization Society (ACS) was set up to enable free African-Americans to return to Africa, as an alternative to emancipation in the United States. In 1822, the society established a colony on the west coast of Africa. This became the independent nation of Liberia, in 1847. This resettlement programme continued such that, twenty years later, more than 13,000 ex-slaves had achieved freedom in Liberia, through the work of the ACS.

97 1830-1834 Seeking more land, the Boers, Europeans of Dutch descent (the word 'boers' means 'farmers') already settled in South Africa, began their 'Great Trek' north, migrating to areas, potential farmlands, beyond the Orange River and into Natal. This led to the 'land transfer, or dispossession of the southern Nguni peoples (see 108).

98 1835 Slavery was banned in England, twenty-eight years after the slave trade itself was banned.

99 1839 West Africa's people and states were challenged by the disruptions and distress caused by the Atlantic slave trade, and the resultant movements of African population.

100 1839-1842 These several years saw the reality of the Amistad (slave) Revolt, on which the 1997 Steven Spielberg film was based. The 'Revolt' was on shipboard, off the coast of Cuba. The impetus of this revolt had a serious effect even on the young United States, as the captured men of the revolt set in motion a battle, using the law, politics and public debate, to raise the public's awareness of the terrible and inhumane aspects of slavery and the slave trade, and concern about the loss of the native homes of the slaves who had been stolen from Africa. Race was an aspect, as well, debating whether or not one race had the right to enslave another. The very fibre of the young American nation was affected.

101 The Amistad Revolt was an important episode in the interlocked histories of: (1) West Africa, whose peoples and states were made to feel uneasy/threatened (in 1839) by the massive loss of population caused by the terrible depredations of the Atlantic Slave Trade; and (2) Cuba, a Spanish possession (in 1839) and both a major sugar producer, perhaps the world's biggest, and also then still a major slave-owning culture, the last in the Caribbean, and (3) a bit farther north, the still young but growing United States, in 1839 poised to become a significant political power beyond its borders, but increasingly torn asunder politically by its situation as half-free and half slave. There were those who believed there was a biblical basis for slavery (see 55 and 84), while perhaps an even greater number had themselves, or their long-remembered antecedents, come to the 'New World' in search of political, religious or other freedoms.

102 1832-3 The British abolished slavery in the West Indies, twenty-five years after banning the British slave trade, and two years before banning slavery itself (in 1835) in England.

103 1850s In midst of the mfecane (see 95), the white Boer Republics of the Orange Free State and the Transvaal were established.

104 1850s Black African journalists and other writers educated in Europe or in various mission and government schools in Africa, began to be recognized. One form of recognition was simply to be published, for one's words to be in print. To this end, some newspapers published stories and poems, the latter in a 'Poets' Corner'. The writings were published in a range of indigenous African languages, as well as in several European languages.

105 1853 David Livingstone travelled three hundred miles along the upper reaches of the Zambezi River, then set off from Linyanti in present-day Botswana to Luanda on the coast of Portuguese Angola. After recovering his strength, he retraced his path to Linyanti before embarking to Quilimane in Mozambique, making him the first European to traverse the continent from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean.

106 1863 The USA Emancipation Proclamation freed all slaves in the United States, even before the end of the Civil War.

107 1870s The Zulu people took up arms against the British.

108 1871 Livingstone witnessed a horrific massacre at a town called Nyangwe in Central Africa, where Arab slave traders pulled out their guns after an argument over the price of a chicken, and indiscriminately shot more than 400 people.

109 1871-1912 During thesedecades, European imperialism, in itsascendancy, was at its strongest and most powerful. The English were well ahead of the race in many respects, even as the other countries were endeavouring to carve themselves a piece of Africa, or establish that which they had already claimed. All the European countries set their own boundaries in Africa, totally heedless of the traditionally recognised boundaries, or tribal/ethnic lands already occupied/possessed by tribes, ethnic groups or even small nations.The long established rule among the colonizing nations was 'divide and rule'. Europeans had begun taking over parts of Africa in the middle of the fifteenth century, raiding them for whatever wealth could be found or created. European actions exacerbated, even encouraged, existing tensions and hostilities between tribes/language groups/ethnic units.

110 This was also a time of 'land reassignment', or 'land alienation', which should more honestly be called 'land grabbing', or 'theft of land' long owned by local people, owned for generations, farmed, and used as pasture land for the farmer's flocks, for generations. It was not 'land alienation'; land cannot be 'alienated' It was the 'alienation' of defenceless and vulnerable Africans, forced to yield to the colonials' powers. (see 76, 97)

111 At the same time, there was a resurgence of self-respect among many black African peoples, who saw the error of the European assumption that European cultures were of higher value than the indigenous, centuries-old cultures of Africa. The black Africans also were beginning to reject even more strongly being governed (and oppressed) by those who believed in 'white supremacy', at the cost of the integrity of black Africans.

112 1873 Livingstone died (a disappointed man) on May first, at Ilala, by the shores of Lake Bangweolo; the slave trade seemed at that point to be ineradicable. Yet, just over a month later, the open sore of slavery did begin to heal, when the Sultan of Zanzibar (5 June, 1973) signed a treaty with the British, pledging to abolish the East African slave trade. The Old Slave Market was sold to the Universities Mission to Central Africa; they erected a splendid cathedral above the old slave cells, a fitting monument to Livingstone's posthumous success as an abolitionist.

113 1879 The British were defeated by the Zulu troops, at Isandhlwana. Not long after that, the Zulus lost to the British at Rourke's Drift, in South Africa.

114 1880s This period saw a resurgence of African-pride writings and subsequent publication; this movement was sometimes referred to as 'self-glorification', but more properly it should be seen as glorying in one's homeland, culture and traditions.

This period also saw increased strife between the colonizing nations and the Africans in many areas, and strong disagreements also between colonizing European nations themselves.

115 1882 At this time, Great Britain assertedits claimover Egypt.

116 1883Awareness of tensions (and respective rights) was rising among both Europeans and Africans, perhaps partially in response to theincreased concerns about the effects of colonization. There were numerous (and relevant) writers in English, foremost among them at that time being the South Africa writer, Olive Schereiner. Her novel, 'The Story of an African Farm', deals brilliantly with the issues of relations between the races, and between men and women. This sensitive book was among the first in this field, and is often cited as a classic.

117 more on 1871-1912

By the end of the 1800s, and even into the 20th century, the partitioning of Africa, regardless of the wishes of the indigenous Africans, was seriously advanced. The new boundaries cut across traditional lines; this had begun as early as the 1400s, becoming ever more damaging to the local communities and culture. The boundaries were set for the convenience of the colonial powers; the opportunities for trade were paramount, often to the detriment of the local producers of the materials sought by the Europeans (some historians have used the word 'steal' to describe the ethics some of the Europe traders) who were protected by armies and armed ships. For many Europeans, the goal was cheap raw materials for European industries. Many also had a perverted 'Christian' ideology (see 55 and 84), tinged by self-righteous racism, seeing all non-whites as pagan heathens. The capitalist colonists followed the earlier footsteps of Christian missionaries, and the (sometimes) even earlier traders.

Tensions between colonizing nations rose, threatening the existing but sometimes fragile peace among theEuropean nations.

118 1884 The German Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, announced a protectorate over the Bay of Angra Pequena (Namibia).

119 1885 In August, Bismarck sent four warships to Zanzibar demanding that the Sultan hand over his empire to Germany.

121 1884-5 The potential dangers to both African and European peace led to the calling of the Berlin conference. Not only all the European colonizing powers, but also the (fairly neutral) United States (where slavery had only recently ended) met to attempt to resolve some of these tensions. At the Conference, the colonizing nations corporately clarified the areas to which they laid claim. They also established 'ground rules' for future development, and also for the use of the Zaire and Niger rivers, important for shipping and other transport. In light of the attitudes of the colonizing nations, it is perhaps not surprising that no African nations were included in the deliberations; when agreements were reached at the Conference, no African nation signed these agreements. Undoubtedly, none were asked, but even had they been asked, they would not have signed and, indeed, did their best to invalidate those decisions, by their (African) opposition. Peace in Africa seemed a distant dream, as there were many revolts at about that same time, in Algeria, Ashantiland (Ghana), Dahomey, the Fulani Hausa states (these latter were finally defeated), and by the Matabele (Ndebele) and the Shona.

122 1885 The 'New Era' newspaper began publication in Sierra Leone. It was the beginning of the independent African press, owned by local individuals, as was the 'New Era', or by local consortia. This was a great step towards ensuring the publication of local views, including opposition to the 'powers that be', opposition to both the African and the non-African governors.

123 1895-1897 Among the new wave of African writers at this time, there was, in his native Boloki, a young man named Buntungu, who wrote of his experiences after a trip to England. His book is'Mokingi mwa Mputu', or 'A Trip to Europe'. The perceptions recorded in this book are of special value, being the observations of an indigenous young educated African.

124 1896 A contemporary and successful African resistance was seen when the Italians suffered a severe defeat by the Ethiopians, under the Emperor Menelik II. At the Battle of Adowa (or Aduwa), his troops wiped out the Italians.

125 1896-1897 There were problems in the British-dominated Rhodesia at this time, as recorded in the British South Africa Company Reports on 'The Native Disturbances in Rhodesia'.

126 Late 19th c Prior to this time, and into the next century, there was evidence of increasing awareness and rising public opinion, in the western countries ('predominantly 'white' countries) against the European colonization and colonial practices.

127 1899-1902 Long periods of tensions finally led to the Anglo-Boer War in South Africa. Though the British officially won the war, it was a pyrrhic victory (one in which the victors are nearly worse off than those they defeated), for they had to make many concessions relating to internal policies. These were demanded (and won) by the Boer's (Afrikaner farmers) political organization. These concessions created the way, eventually, for the white Afrikaners to shake off the shackles of British domination. It also gave the European-descent Afrikaners power over the black African majority at that time.|The clownfish (Amphiprion percula) is a kind of fish that inhabits the salt water habitats. It is well known as the Anemonefish. Typically the clownfish are bright colored in orange and have three marked white stripes around their body, one around the head, other around the belly, and another around the tail. When observed closely, thin black lines can be noticed lining the white stripes. Also black coatings surrounding the tips of their fins can be seen.

The clownfish belong to the Family Pomacentridae and the Genus Amphiprion. They can grow from 2 to 5 inches in length. The male clownfish are considerably smaller in size in comparison to the female clownfish. There are varied kinds of clownfish depending upon the colors ranging from blue to yellow and many more striking colors.

Clownfish exhibit great quality of symbiotic relationship with other species of anemones, which means the clownfish gains advantages from the anemones and the anemones get benefitted by clownfish in return. They are the only species which can survive along the sea anemones and do not get harmed by the spiky tentacles.

Clownfish has a slippery mucus layer on its body that protects them from the tentacles of the sea anemone. If this protective covering is not in place, then it will be hard for the clownfish to survive the spikes of the sea anemones. The clownfish and the sea anemone are mutually useful to one another in the ocean. The clownfish is provided with snippets of food and other nourishment from the anemone and at the same time the clownfish provides enhanced water circulation through the anemone by fluttering of its fins while swimming through.

Clownfish are both energetic and extremely violent. The over anxiety and excitement exhibited by the clownfish makes it to assume as if it is clowning around and hence the name clownfish is proffered on the species. The clownfish are well equipped to guard their terrains and the sea anemone they inhabit in. They like to feed on the odds and ends leftover by other fish on the anemone and plankton. The leftover snippets are the copepods, isopods and zooplankton.

Clownfish face low threat from ocean predators but the greatest threats for their survival are humans. The clownfish are caught for ornamental purposes, but these species can thrive and flourish well in wild rather than in captivity. They tend to live for a period of 6 to 10 years in wild in comparison to a shorter lifespan of 3 to 5 years in captivity.Click on an image to view larger version & data in a new window

Clownfish like to dwell in trivial lagoons or petty reefs deep inside the oceans typically in pairs. At the same time they maintain a great bonding with the anemone as well. They chase away the butterfly fish which usually tries to feed on the polyps of the sea anemones.

Clownfish is a tropical fish and is usually found in the warmer waters of the Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean. They are also found in oceanic waters of northwest Australia, Japan, southeast Asia, and the Indo-Malaysian region. Caribbean has no populace of clownfish in its waters.

Click on an image to view larger version & data in a new window

The spawning season of the clownfish can be any season all year round in the warm tropical waters. Males when are ready to spawn fascinate the females by wooing. Courting manners include chasing, biting and extending fins around the females. Female clownfish lay the eggs in groups on the corals, rocks or alongside the sea anemone. The male clownfish builds a nest around the eggs to safeguard them from the predators. Breeding begins when the male pursues the female to the nest where the female lays the eggs. The female clownfish lays around 100 to 1000 eggs at a time. Then the male clownfish sentries and shelters the eggs until they hatch and small fry come out of them. The fry usually hatch out within 4 to 5 days.

Clownfish are usually found in groups and in every group there is an austere hierarchy of supremacy. The biggest and most violent female is remains on the top and dominates others. Only one couple takes the charge of reproducing and undergoes external fertilization. The clownfish are hermaphrodites, which means they develop into males first, and when they mature, they tend to change as females.|The two stars within the Libra constellation, Alpha, along with Beta Librae, are both astronomical highlights meriting seeing with the naked eye, field glasses and scopes. Furthermore, these two Libran stars are what makes up the romance and secrets of Libra.

Alpha Librae is a colourful twin typically depicted as radiant by viewers. The stars are conventionally characterized as bright white and radiant yellow and Beta Librae has for many periods been specified as the unique single star perceptible in the celestial sphere. Beta Librae for many eras has been referred to as the exclusive green star observable to the naked eye.

The majority of observers and many astronomers conceive there are no perceivable green stars. The agreed wisdom is that the human optical structure will translate ranges climaxing at concise wavelengths as white with a blue shade and ranges culminating at long wavelengths as white with a reddish-orange hue. However, characteristically green stars are practically never referred to. But seasoned astronomers understand that Beta Librae has subsisted as a green star over several eras.

In spite of the fact that astronomers understand the two clearest stars of Libra as Alpha and Beta, the stars have been studied for so long that they have favoured titles. Furthermore, their favourite names are two of the most interesting in the heavens.

Alpha Librae is called, "Zubenelgenubi," and Beta Librae is known as, "Zubeneschamali." These are both derive from the Arabic language and from a very peculiar age when the Roman empire controlled the known world. Those two designations touch on one of the biggest puzzles of the zodiac. The designation Zubenelgenubi stands for 'The Southern Claw' and Zubeneschamali designates 'The Northern Claw.' At some spot throughout the supremacy of Rome, the academics of the period agreed to modify the zodiac and for rationales as yet unknown decided to remove the group of stars Libra by uniting the stars of Libra with the stars of Scorpius.

Libra continues to be unequalled amid the zodiac signs and it is the only zodiac symbol that is lifeless, if you analyse all the other characters you will see they are persons, creatures, bugs and so forth - only Libra is not a living object.|Cornel defines the idea of the "Normative Gaze" by using relation between historic background providing the ideals of beauty and the facts of white supremacy. The ideals of beauty are those which seem to be deeply rooted in plainness, symmetry and what eventually came to be considered "normal." This production of normality through art and literature Cornel endeavors to show goes beyond just the proportion of body and structure of face but it in fact supersedes also into race.

From the literature of Wincklemann-opinionating that Greece houses the ultimate of beauty, to the 1520 Paracelsus claiming that black or primitive people were of separate origin of those of the European nature, to Buffon and Linnaeus who both held position that all races were a variation of one with differences explained by either climate or other chance. Each analysis provides a comparison between differences, variations and measurements to find some type of normality or position to classify from.

Cornel concurs with Foucalt in his saying that, "Natural history...constitutes a whole domain empiricity as at the same time describable and orderable." Meaning that it is natural history and therefore natural tendency to classify and organize (in this case human beings). That classification can certainly come from many different directions but poignantly for our discussion it is simply coming from skin color and ethnicity.

From this Cornel determines is where white supremacy has sprouted-the need and tendency to classify and categorize. White supremacy then becomes the first actual modern discourse of the modern West producing what can be referred to as the "Normative Gaze."|Cyclades architecture is one of a kind. With the advent of tourism on each of these islands, word about the uniqueness of Cyclades architecture has spread far and wide. If you visit Santorini, Andros, Naxos or any other Cycladic island, you will see that each of the island villages have whitewashed cubic houses with blue wooden doors and windows. Even the streets have been painted white and constructed with rectangular or polygonal flagstones. The old world charm exudes from each of these islands. The builders who built these houses had a preconceived idea to construct the houses according to the land conditions on these islands. Rarely will you ever come across very fashionable architectural extravaganza. Even the hotels here have certain architectural rules that they usually conform to.

Buildings constructed here had to serve the purposes of the islanders as well as complement the fantastic landscape of each of these islands. All of the buildings or residential houses in the villages are built in a manner to maintain a certain balance and uniformity. When you walk through the labyrinth of narrow lanes, you will see that the houses tend to look similar in many respects. There are sometimes series of one storey houses at one place and at another place there are series of two storey houses. All of them are painted white in contrast to the dark ground on which they stand and have the unique blue color painted on doors and windows reflecting the vast blue sea and the sky around them. Cyclades architecture looks very surreal at times and you are often led to wander whether you are in some fantasy land.

In Cyclades architecture, you will see that even the streets are all the same. It is the place where most of the activity takes place. Restaurants, bars and cafeterias all open up into the streets. The streets are like a continuation of the houses in this place. You will hardly come across grand public squares here and most of them occupy a very small area. It is usually the meeting place of people who come here to chat and spend time over a cup of coffee or a glass of wine. Even the architecture of the churches in this place is in conformity to the housing architecture in each village. Of course, their blue domes have definitely made them very popular indeed among national and international tourists. One interesting feature of the two-storey houses here is that the second storey has an outside staircase to the upper floor.

This outside staircase is found in all the houses having two-storey structure. In Cyclades architecture, it is a very popular custom where it is seen that separate individuals own separate floors in the same building. This custom had started way back in the times when the Venetians owned the islands and had established their supremacy here. Once the castle walls came up surrounding the settlements, there was lack of proper places to stay for people coming into this village from other parts. At that time, many families in need of goods rented out their ground floors to these goods-trading people. Often you will come across houses in these villages that have opened stores in the ground floor whereas the family lives in the upper floor.

Thus most of the Cyclades architecture found in the villages comprise of whitewashed houses with vaulted, pitched or inclined roofs, blue-domed churches, fountains in public squares, windmills on top of the cliffs or hills, and ornately decorated dovecotes in the villages. The houses are built in such a manner on these undulating landscapes of the Cycladic islands that it appears to have been growing out of the sides of the hills.|God deliver us in America from the evil of shock jocks on the TV airwaves fighting for originality and supremacy.

"These six things doth the LORD hate: yes, seven are an abomination unto Him: a proud look, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood; a heart that devises wicked imaginations, feet that be swift in running to mischief; a false witness that speaks lies, and he that sows discord among brethren" (Proverbs 6:16-19).

Bill O'Reilly claims he broke Senator Obama's Pastor Problems Story about Rev. Wright.

3-19-08 -- In his 3-18-08 column at the conservative website newsmax.com O'Reilly states:

O'REILLY: "Likewise, the nightly network news programs have downplayed the situation. On Friday, ABC News ignored it and NBC News gave it 20 seconds."

"Had the 'O'Reilly Factor' not broken the story last Thursday night, it would have likely died which is exactly what the leftist media wants."

What Bill fails to tell the American people is that ABC News reported the Rev. Wright story on Thursday morning on Good Morning America.

MSNBC had been reporting Obama's Pastor Problems almost as much as FOX had been. As for O'Reilly, he implied that ABC News had totally ignored the story, when in actuality it was ABC who released the story on Thursday morning.

O'Reilly inaccurately claims NBC only gave the Rev. Wright story 20 seconds, which in actuality their cable news network MSNBC covered it nearly 24/7 for several days after its release on Thursday.

O'Reilly erroneously and inaccurately claimed he broke the story Thursday night.

The pertinence to this is when shock jocks like Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity call their news network "fair and balanced" (while their talk show programs ask guests a question and than proceed to bulldoze over them to look like the intellectual hero and "culture warrior" on a mission to save a misguided America), don't believe them for a minute.

They who lie about the originality of a news story and fight for supremacy among themselves on the very same network are swallowed up by their very own egos, thereby making them tainted and incapable of delivering "fair and balanced" news.

The true assessment and credit should go to the NY Times, who actually broke the Rev. Wright story when they reported it on April 30, 2007. The NY Times broke the story before ABC News did, a story which they had almost a year ago.

Sean Hannity also claims he broke the story. The night before the Obama speech in Pennsylvania, Hannity said this to Karl Rove on Hannity & Colmes.

HANNITY: "We broke this story. I know everyone's taking credit for it now. Won't this put him in the category of being seen by the American people as your average politician, spinning like a top, and that this is done to save and salvage his campaign, and it's being done for political expediency."

Ironically the big boys competing to be number one on the shock jock circuit with Fox News are the very same talk show hosts who are jeopardizing the Fox News claim to being "fair and balanced."

I guess it's kind of like Jon Stewart reported on "The Daily Show" when CNN claimed to have the "best political team in news" and Fox shortly thereafter upped the self-exalting assertion saying Fox had "the best political team in news ever."

Thankfully the American people are a bit more clever and are catching on to the trickery of sly as a fox fixed news and all its noise.|Introduction Diversity education is becoming a solution for many businesses. In the European Union, it is offered to small and medium-sized businesses to develop their capacity to include people of across states in the union and cultures. Australia's government utilizes diversity education to end a history of discrimination against Aboriginal and Islander people. Asia finds it useful for increasing productivity in multinational companies, and for addressing the historical challenges of achieving harmony between Muslim and Hindu citizens. South Africa has implemented diversity education to adjust to the removal of the Apartheid system. The United States has offered diversity education for decades, although the rationale for its use has changed over time.

This article is limited to characterizing the history of diversity education in the United States. A history of diversity education in other countries and continents will follow in future issues.

Diversity Training and education in the United States

Many organizations, communities, military sectors, and higher education institutions have been conducting some form of diversity education since the 1960s in the United States. Businesses used diversity training in the late 1980s and throughout the 90s to protect against and settle civil rights suits. Many organizations now assume that diversity education can boost productivity and innovation in an increasingly diverse work environment. The assumptions about the value of diversity training, as a result of its changing functions and uses, have evolved over the decades.

Diversity education basically started as a reaction to the civil rights movement and violent demonstrations by activists determined to send a clear message to Americans of European descent that black people would no longer remain voiceless regarding their treatment as citizens. Social change in order to achieve a more stable society prevailed was the rationale for the education, which primarily focused on training to increase sensitivity towards and awareness of racial differences.

Encounter groups became a popular training method for bringing white and black Americans together for honest and emotional discussions about race relations. The military employed encounter groups in what is perhaps the largest scale diversity education experiment ever conducted. Many of the facilitators viewed the "encounter" among racial group participating in diversity training as successful when at least one white American admitted that he or she was racist and tearful about racial discrimination and white supremacy.

Employing a black-white pair of facilitators was considered essential for exposing participants to the two race relations perspective and to model cross-racial collaboration. The facilitators were typically men, and the white facilitator was most valued if he could openly show emotions about his own journey in discovering his deep-seated racism.

Facilitators saw their work as a way to achieve equality in a world that had historically oppressed those with less social, political, and economic power. Confronting white Americans who made excuses for, or denied their racism, was common in this diversity training approach. The goal was to increase white American sensitivity to the effects of racial inequity.

White American participants tended to respond to confrontation in sensitivity training in three important ways. One group of whites became more insightful about the barriers to race relations as a result of being put on the hot seat during the encounters. Another group became more resistant to racial harmony as they fought against accepting the facilitators' label of them as racists. A third group became what the military referred to as "fanatics." These individuals began advocating against any forms of racial injustice after the training.

H. R. Day's research on diversity training in the military indicates that the Defense Department Race Relations Institute reduced the amount of training hours and curtailed the use of the "hot seat" techniques in response to negative evaluations by many participants who completed the training. Diversity training in corporations also began to change as Affirmative Action laws were being curtailed by the federal government.

While gender diversity education began to emerge during the 1970s and 1980s, diversity education in the United States expanded in the 1990s to focus on barriers to inclusion for other identity groups. Ability difference, ethnic, religious, gay, lesbian, and other worldviews began to appear in education and training.

Some diversity pioneers argue that the broader view of diversity has "watered down" the focus on race to the extent that it is no longer seriously dealt with in training. Their assumption is that focusing on prejudice towards other groups does not activate the visceral reaction needed for individuals, organizations, and the society as whole to deal with core discrimination issues.

Recent research shows that people in the United States have more negative reactions towards people who are gay or lesbian. It seems that many Americans share an anti-gay and lesbian attitude, primarily based on religious beliefs. However, even the attitude towards gays and lesbians is becoming more positive way, as indicated by the success of the movie Brokeback Mountain about two cowboy lovers, and the introduction of legislation that protects their rights.

Multiculturalism refers to the inclusion of the full range of identity groups in education. The goal is to take into consideration each of the diverse ways people identify as cultural beings. This perspective has become the most widely used approach today in diversity education. The inclusion of other identity groups poses the challenges of maintaining focus on unresolved racial discrimination and effectively covering the many different identity groups.

The current focus on white privilege training in one sector of diversity work maintains a place for racism in diversity education. White privilege education involves challenging white people to consider the benefits they reap individually as a member of the racial group with the most social, political, and economic power.

While white privilege, multiculturalism, and racism work are each very important, diversity professionals must keep in mind that organizations vary in diversity education needs. Determining how to meet these needs requires the trainer to possess critical thinking skills and an ability to facilitate issues outside of her or his cultural experience. The capable diversity professional has the ability to determine when race education is the suitable intervention, when gender orientation is called for, when addressing homophobia is necessary, etc.

Discussions about gender differences, sexual orientation, Native American identity, Latino empowerment, white privilege, etc. provide a rich context for understanding the complexity of American diversity. Today's savvy diversity trainer has the expertise to take a multicultural perspective in facilitating and training, and he or she commands knowledge of the range of identity groups. Giving each identity group the attention it deserves is no small matter as a result.

The reality of global mobilization has required an even broader view of diversity work due to working with an increasingly cross-national audience. The use of the label African American, for example, is complicated by white and black Africans immigrating to the United States. An organization may have employees from the former Yugoslavia, refugees from Somalia, guest workers from India, and people with limited English-speaking skills-just to name a few modern diversity challenges. Religious diversity accompanies globalism, which is also included in modern diversity education.

It is likely that this complexity of identity group needs prompted diversity professionals like Judith Katz to focus on promoting inclusive organizations. The objective is to remove the barriers to productivity for every member of the organization with particular concern for historically excluded group members.

Another recent change is the emphasis on diversity education, rather than diversity training. While the use of one term versus another is regularly debated, it is a valuable exchange of ideas. From the author's perspective, the term diversity education both broadens the view of what diversity programs within organizations are about and manages the often negative connotation diversity training activates. Perhaps more important is that the term allows us to distinguish between diversity training and other programmatic activities among diversity practices.

In addition, diversity expertise has changed over time, which partly reflects changing demands and the growth in the field's body of knowledge. A description of the profession before the rise of the chief diversity officer tells us a lot about what diversity professionals faced as consultants.

Diversity Pioneers

Diversity professionals are hired on staff in organizations that understand that diversity is capital and harnessing it in the service of productivity requires a long term commitment. An in-house diversity professional is responsible for leading a diversity initiative within an organization. Some have the title chief diversity officer or vice president of diversity, while others are considered diversity coordinators or steering committee chairs. Regardless of what they are called, these positions are becoming increasingly prevalent in organizations. Not long ago, a human resource officer would hire a consultant or trainer to handle a diversity matter with sensitivity-awareness training as the expected the solution.

Diversity pioneers laid the foundation for the emergence of today's diversity leaders. A diversity pioneer is someone who has been in the profession for more than twenty years, which includes those who have served either as an in-house or consulting professional. The in-house professionals are activists for diversity, inclusion and fairness. It is the contributions of external consultants and trainers that is the focus in this article.

Here is a list of diversity pioneers in the United States:

o Elsie Cross

o Price Cobb

o Sybil Evans

o John Fernandez

o Lee Gardenswartz

o Lewis Griggs

o Ed Hubbard

o Judith Katz

o Frances Kendall

o Fred Miller

o Patricia Pope

o Ann Rowe

o Donna Springer

o Roosevelt Thomas

The list is based on data collected a couple of years ago by Diversity Training University International students. An editorial staff member brought to the author's attention that he began his diversity teaching and consulting career in 1986. His initial reaction was feeling intimidated by the thought of placing his name on a list with such an esteemed group of pioneers.

Few diversity pioneers had specialized training when starting out in the business. Louis Griggs, for example, is a Stanford MBA. Judith Katz had a more closely related background with a doctorate from University of Massachusetts that focused on race relations. She also taught in the University of Oklahoma Human Relations Program for ten years prior to entering the business sector as a fulltime consultant.

The author is trained as an applied research cultural- cognitive psychologist at the University of California, San Diego. After receiving the doctorate in 1986, he taught cultural competence for nearly two decades. Each diversity pioneer had had to learn about how to navigate the landmines in diversity work while on the front lines as consultants, trainers, and educators.

What the pioneers may have lacked in credentials specific to the diversity profession, they more than made up for with the bumps and bruises they endured in the trenches of just doing the work.

Raising the Bar

Judith Katz was a student activist for social justice in the late 1960s. Judith began her diversity profession by focusing on racism from a white American perspective. By the mid 1980s she was working for The Kaleel Jamison Consulting Group. Affirmative action was at its height, and many companies utilized independent diversity professionals to provide programs to help increase the numbers of African Americans and women employees. Some organizations utilized diversity training to safeguard against civil rights suits during this period of time. Much of the training "focused primarily on black-white racial issues and sexism", according to Judith, "with little if any attention given to, Latino, Asian, sexual orientation, age or people with disabilities."

Judith also noticed that the business case in those days emphasized diversity as doing the right thing, rather than as a business imperative. People were expected to fit into the existing organizational culture. It was difficult at the time to effect real organizational change.

"The major change is that diversity is now accepted as a key business driver, rather than diversity for diversity's sake." This was accompanied by a shift away from the confrontational approach common in the early stages of diversity education history. According to Judith, "for some folks diversity was about compliance (the concern about law suits) for others it was about increasing individual diversity awareness. The confrontational approach to raising individual awareness did not create systems change in the long run. Some individuals became more aware but the very systems, structures and processes often remained unchanged. Judith notes that many organizations still approach diversity from a compliance perspective but, more and more organizational leaders are going well beyond that. They understand that "if you are not leveraging diversity, you are not in the game of business today."

Judith is concerned about the challenges that continue to face diversity professionals as well as chief diversity officers. The following is a list of some of her concerns for in-house professionals who lead diversity initiatives:

o Diversity leaders must contend with organizational leaders who give lip service to the diversity initiative without putting their hearts and souls into it or offer it the necessary resources for success.

o As a result, diversity leaders too often shoulder the full weight of the diversity initiative.

o They can get too buried in the work to be effective.

o They are expected to partner with many different parts of the organization, which contributes to additional stress.

o They work alone and are expected to single-handedly get a very difficult job done.

o They are expected to manage a highly political role while getting their job done and legally protecting the organization.

The result is that leading the diversity initiative can be a very difficult, demanding, and lonely job from Judith's perspective.

Judith believes that leaders of organizations need to "raise its bar" for expectations in delivering results from the diversity initiative. This is the best way to support the diversity officer. A good example is to make people in the organization accountable for contributing to promoting inclusion-especially managers and supervisors. Linking bonuses and merit pay to clear diversity and inclusion metrics is seldom given serious consideration in even the top fifty diversity companies. But this obviously raises the bar of expectations and performance.

Thanks to Judith, diversity consultants and trainers have a role model. In the author's opinion, she is one of the few who can successfully engage business leaders in serious discussions about organizational inclusion.

Valuing Diversity

Valuing diversity is a term that's used quite a bit these days in making a case for diversity and inclusion-Thanks to Lewis Griggs. When he coined the words during the early 1980s, his clients thought it was "too touchy-feely." It wasn't affirmative action or equal employment opportunity language. One African American male colleague told him that the terminology was downright dangerous because white America was not ready to value people for their differences. But, fortunately for us, he had a vision.

Lewis is a European American who came to diversity work through his own individual growth experiences. Griggs says "While doing international training during the early 1980s, I realized that people from other countries had more knowledge about me as an American than I had about them. This meant the 'other' had more power over me in our interactions. I discovered how ethnocentric I was." Griggs figured that if he was ethnocentric about people from other countries, then "Could I be ethnocentric here in the United States?"

Griggs continued to do ground breaking work. He developed a series of valuing diversity videos. Then he developed one of the first online diversity training programs. The annual diversity conference offered by the Society of Human Resource Management was created by Lewis. Thanks to Lewis, increasing numbers of organizations have embraced the idea that we need to value differences.

Avoiding a Backlash

The higher education sector started offering diversity courses in the general education curricula during the 1980s. Stanford University and the California State University at Fullerton, for example, dared to offer mandatory cultural diversity courses to fulfill general education requirements. There was considerable debate among academicians about whether or not the canon needed protection against including diversity courses.

The author found himself in the middle of the cultural wars as a new assistant professor with a joint appointment in Ethnic Studies and psychology. His training made it easy to interweave cultural differences into developmental, social, and cognitive psychology courses. He also taught mandatory general education diversity courses. The primarily European American, politically conservative students were very resistant to the required courses.

Students resisted less as the courses integrated into the curricula over the years, but many continued to struggle with the material due to difficulty with accepting values and beliefs different from their own.

Recruitment of historically excluded group members, especially students of color, was the primary focus at most universities. No one would seriously listen to ideas about creating an inclusive organization before increasing the numbers of students of color. The attitude was "let's just get as many students of color in as possible and worry about how to retain them later". Retaining and graduating these historically excluded students became major problems as the numbers of recruits increased.

The author also witnessed incredible gains in attracting students of historically excluded groups and creating an inclusive environment-only to see those gains undermined by changes in the leadership and economic climate. The lesson learned is that sustainable diversity and inclusion initiatives require an on-going commitment to remove all the barriers that can lead to reverting to old ways of doing business. Diversity and inclusion must, for example, be part of each and every new initiative that comes along in order to protect the organization from moving back to earlier inclusion stages.

As economic, political, and global changes required new ways of solving old problems, the pioneers experienced many bumps in the road. This brief history suggests that their sheer determination and commitment built an invaluable foundation from which we all can draw meaningful lessons. This magazine is designed as a solution for building on the pioneers' foundation so that we can better manage the impact of inevitable environmental changes that impact diversity work.|I've been in school a long time, heard a lot of facts, read a lot of books, and researched innumerable studies. And, all in all, I can say that I have learned a great deal. Yet, when I think about my learning in its' totality, I can not escape the notion that "academia" seems to socialize the so-called Black academician into a consciousness that is very influenced the ideals, values, and beliefs based in"white supremacy." Now, you may ask, "what exactly does all that mean?" Essentially, the higher the Black academician ascribes to climb in the world of academia, the more westernized/eurocentric the body of information becomes. Before you dismiss what it is that I am saying, let me further explain how. First off, most Americans are educated from the start using a paradigm which is also entirely shaped from the perspective of European persons (i.e.history being the greatest example). In elementary, middle high school, and college, students learn American History throughout, which is almost entirely the account of white males and their dominance upon the weaker races. To be more specific, we learn that the Europe has always been the so-called "civilizing force" the world throughout. A great example would be the illustrations that all children receive of Native Americans, which describes them as "savages" that were running around naked and hostile until the pilgrim landed upon their "godless" soil. And last, but definitely not least, students learn that the African-American was running around naked in Africa, and that he was a slave, whom enjoyed the toils of his labor; he, in turn, creates the "all-time favorite-Negro spiritual", but accepts his place of servility willingly. Now, one could only imagine what this does to the psyche of the pupils who are taught these lessons. One may assume that the European pupil would in all probability excel, because he has been taught that he is the dominant, civilizing, intellectual who created polite society and academia itself.The African-American child, in many cases, performs poorly because he has developed an unconscious inferiority complex, which has manifested itself in sometimes poor scholastic performance. On the other hand, those who do excel are many times branded as "acting white," because the psychology of inferiority has inadvertently been supplanted in the minds of the students in a way that makes them believe that Blacks are innately less intelligent. Sound familiar? These types of lessons are such that they keep the status quo balanced. Think about it, education has always been the means by which the powers that be separate the haves from the have nots, only further stratifying class and economic positions of the persons that live in this country. It all makes so much sense. We are told early on, in every classroom, that the higher performers are "the cream of the crop," tbus making the rest less valuable; We are told that "knowledge is power," thus making the smart kid the "powerful." We are told that we are priviledged, thus making educated people part of an "elite" group, which is especially true of the college-educated African-American. Now these sayings are probably motivational to many, but the problem is that all should be encouraged to do well, not just a select few. And, consequently, these types repetitive mantras, if you will, have a way of pushing many of the African-Americans whom excel in scholastics to shy away from their "blackness." Remember, "blackness" is coorelated with ignorance; it is aligned with that which is bad and undesirabe, as it always has been. Now, I am not saying that this is true of all Black academicians; However, I would dare say that many have felt the pressure at one time or another to be more "white." This is even more pervasive the higher that one goes in academia. Black academicians are taught how they should talk, how important it is to appear as a scholar; otherwise, one could be accused of being "too black."

Throughout the educational experience, students are pointed to book after book, that is supposedly to help then become authorities in different areas. Problem? most of these books are written by Europeans, and are thus written from a European perspective that does not take into account the relevance and effect that the Black experience has on the Black academician and the culture. What is even more disturbing is the fact that many of those persons that are considered to be the foremost scholars on African and African-American culture are also European. So, the question then becomes "how can the so-called Black academician become better equipped with a knowledge of self and the tools necessary to equip and lead his people if he is continually taught from a Westernized construct, the same one that in fact has served to strip him and make him take an assimilationist stance that requires him to leave out those matters that are culturally significant.

I've sat in class after class, where we Black "academicians" have talked about what we consider the "Black Problem." And, very passionately i've heard many a classmate say with passion and conviction what "those people" could do if "they" would educate themselves." Now, "who does that sound like.?" Those words are emblematic of the disconnection between the Black academician and those that he desires to help; However, there must be reconnect if things are to change. If the Black academician is to truly understand the problem, he has to take his knowledge beyond the walls and halls of academia; I ask you, "how can a doctor diagnose a problem if he never examines the patient in an up close and personal way?" He can not. He can only guess because he has heard of some of the symptoms at one time or another. In effect, if Black America is to make more strides toward liberation and America wants to truly educate its' people, we must first be able to fully understand their problems and concerns, which can be done through education. To do so, we must get in the midst of our people, know our people, and stop separating ourselves from our people, because for too long the opposite has been happening in the halls of academia. In other words, we need to "stop preaching to the choir." We must also include the notion of Afrocentricity (circularity) in our teachings and Africa in the classroom; as cliche' as it sounds, it is not just Black history, but it is American history. As we've seen since the years of desegregation, the other stuff "just aint workin'" (forgive the EBONICS). Essentially, what I am saying is that the canon from which we work now to educate our youth is prejudiced, warped, and only furthers exacerbates attitudes of racism and discrimination that have existed in this country for centuries; And, if we are to truly educate and empower "Black Youth," which the world claims are the laziest and poorest performers in most classrooms, then the Black academician must make it his job to write his own story, and teach from his own perspective.|The Obama's have made constant news since America elected the first non-white leader of a western industrialized country. The New York Times noted the relaxed Oval Office atmosphere as early as inauguration week. The new First Lady has become an icon with her bare arms, White House garden and visits to families of armed services personnel. The first couple's date nights and their popularity overseas have been headlined with every event. Yet the deeper implications of the overturned "pale male" power structure remained only indirectly addressed during the first six months of the new administration.

The intense focus on the new President's personal and family life was testimony to the magnitude of the cultural breakthrough with the 2008 US presidential election. In contrast to the formerly secretive Republican White House, the young non-white family has been covered by the media in a detail evocative of curiosity about foreign missionaries on a hidden tropical island. The swatting of a fly during a live interview on June 18 was an example of how the new President's charisma became an instant news item. People for the Ethical Treatment of animals called the incident an "execution" of a "lowliest" of creatures while the event became a symbol of political dexterity in a Sunday New York Times column.

The successful inauguration of the ground-breaking non-white leader was met with global cheer and no doubt relief after a state of emergency was declared for the event, as The New York Times reported on January 14. The departure of an American administration that had increasingly lost support was undoubtedly another factor in the global sigh of relief despite the global financial crisis created by the departing administration's conservative economic policies and its precedent-setting bailouts of financial institutions whose mismanagement had created the debacle.

The combination of novelty and relief glossed over early disappointments in the "change" the new President had signified during his campaign. There were charges of "socialism" from the right and charges of "capitulation" from the grassroots left. Yet openness and eloquence appeared capable of letting the new leader walk the fine line between radical change and practical feasibility. Even so, the popularly welcome style and its stark contrast to the conservative Republicans appearing to "flail" after the 2008 defeat was a wake-up call to the reality of how "whites" had ruled the world for millennia.

In early June, an octogenarian proponent of white supremacy opened fire on the Holocaust Museum in Washington. Also in that month, the far right parties in Europe won over liberals and centrists in the European Parliamentary vote on the issue of anti-immigration. A Southern US Senator apologized for inferring a connection between a gorilla and the country's new First Lady while another lawmaker apologized for an internet joke sent by an aid showing a pair of white eyes as the official portrait of the new American President.

The new First Lady's Princeton University thesis had addressed the racial divide in America. Written in 1985, she wrote then that the most liberal of her white colleagues would always see her as "black" before seeing her next most defining aspects.

In late May, the Obama's jetted from Washington to New York for a hot Saturday night on the town. New York's mayor welcomed the boost to the city's economy while Republicans blasted the outing as a taxpayer-sponsored "splurge" when the country was struggling economically. The Obamas were hailed after a night out in Paris following the President's historic address in Cairo to the world Muslim community but a Republican Congressman said the President "had his nerve" to call on the American Congress to do its job with health care reform while he himself enjoyed a junket overseas.

Those Republican outcries portrayed America's new non-white President as cavalier at a time when mainstream America suffered despite its best attempts at toiling. At its best, the criticism smacked of veiled stereotypes. At its worst, the charge portended a short experiment in electing a non-white to be a leader of a western industrialized country.|One of our great historical icons has now become a badge of dishonor to the Missouri Information Analysis Center (MIAC). The flag created by Colonel Christopher Gadsden and used by the colonists prior to the adoption of the stars and stripes is now considered to be a sign of a possible domestic terrorist. Never mind that many naval personnel have such a sticker on their cars. It is also revered by many who have an appreciation for American history.

MIAC compiled the report to help law enforcement personnel identify persons who may need watching to protect their citizens from terror attacks. They have decided the modern militia movement is sufficient threat to distract police and investigators from following up on those who have sworn to destroy our country.

Who else is considered troublesome? People who voted for or promoted third party candidates like Ron Paul, Chuck Baldwin or Bob Barr. People who are standing up against illegal immigration or may be supportive of our constitution. People who are concerned about the federal reserve system. People who are looking to keep their guns in the face of potential federal moves to restrict second amendment freedoms.

If any of these fit you, it's time to be concerned. Missouri is middle America... not Governor Schwarzenegger's land of fruits, nuts and flakes. Sure we have crazies running around, but the inability to draw a more precise picture shows perhaps the internalized prejudices of the group or a complete misunderstanding of our American heritage, culture and values.

Even if those concerns are not your hot button issues, but you have the audacity to believe we should not condone the killing of babies or even if you just take your relationship with God seriously with something as innocuous as the "My Boss Is A Jewish Carpenter" bumper sticker, you could be in the governments cross hairs. They can't seem to distinguish between the white supremacist Christian Identity movement which raises some legitimate concerns and the prayer warriors at your local church.

The primary things we Christians need to take away from this report is that not only are we not understood by the people now in charge of our society, but in some quarters there is actual hostility and a desire to make Christians look as bad as AIG executives. So... do we pull back, hide and keep our mouths shut as some would like? What would be the result of this cowardly posture? For one thing, we would not be doing our job of being salt and light in a world full of darkness. Then, even more important, many others would live life without the witness to the truth that could change them forever.

There are already rumblings that the charitable tax deduction may be going away and federal funding for anything remotely connected with God is quickly drying up. Our environment is quickly changing. We have decisions to make. So back to the question, do we pull back, hide and keep our mouths shut or do we continue doing what we know is right? These times appear to be requiring focus and courage. The people in Washington and our state capitols would like us to quietly fade into the background. Will we?

Even though we have no intention of blowing up buildings or poisoning water supplies - and the left knows it, dedicated Christians, even law abiding one, do pose a threat because our loyalties lie far from the oval office... no matter who sits in it. Just as Detrick Bonhoeffer spoke the truth in Nazi Germany, we too are called to speak the truth today. We need to be prepared for the time when all or part of Christian teaching may be officially condemned. This may seem far fetched, but just over our northern border, Canadian pastors have been charged with hate crimes for preaching that homosexuality is a sin. Now is the time to decide our course of action and not wait until opposition materializes.

We need to look back into the history that many would love to have us forget and hear the words of Patrick Henry when people tried to shout him down with cries of "Treason". He responded with "If this be treason, make the most of it!" What will our answer be?|There is great sensitivity about addressing black issues in therapeutic relationships and the training and supervision of counsellors. Counsellor training programmes and provision in mainstream institutions has been lacking in direction and theory on how to process these issues. This has meant that qualified counsellors as well as trainees have not been facilitated to voice their experience of black issues. This is mainly because of fear about addressing experiences of and the impact of racism.

First let me describe what I mean by 'black issues'. I have used the definition 'black issues' to describe cultural reference points, belief systems and experiences of racism pertaining to people of colour, of African and Asian heritage, subject to minority oppression and racism in Britain. This group are the most visible minority the least represented in the field of psychotherapy and counselling and over-represented in the mental health system. I am also aware that black peoples are not one homogeneous group and that grouping may increase the potential for stereotyping. However in Britain and the US these groups often use the term 'black' in a positive and unifying way due to shared experiences of racism.

The term 'black' in psychotherapeutic language has mainly been referred to as a colour or an image linked to the dark, negative, depressive, shadow side of the psyche. Perpetuation of this concept through the English language has had a negative impact on the collective psyche and become a linchpin for institutional racism. Not knowing how to undermine institutional racism and how to address the impact of racism on individuals has been a long-term concern for counselling organisations and individual practitioners. An open dialogue about black achievements, the greatness of African and Asian peoples as well as the adversity of racism is an important element in the healing of black psychological development and key to the understanding of both black and white therapists. It is important to note that the definition does not suggest that attention is focused entirely on black peoples or issues of racism. This is why I have used the term 'issues' rather than 'peoples'. Hall uses the term 'essentialising' to explain this particular type of focus on black people.

It is also necessary to be aware of our own roles in the history, institutions and social processes of the inequality, which frequently confront us in cross-cultural work. Beyond this for our part we must avoid essentialising and totalising our clients as 'black subjects' (Hall 1992) and search for ways in which we may help them discover a range of representations of themselves and in this way encourage a critical dialogue around personal politics. (in Krause 1998 p161)

When essentialising occurs the focus is frequently directed on to issues of racism, with little understanding of the impact of social history on the personal development of both black and white counsellors and clients. In this sense the impact of slavery, colonialism, racism, partition, caste systems, indentured labour are all to be considered in the present climate of cross cultural communication. However historical factors of oppression should not be taken for granted as the main factors.

Research carried out among Asian women in Glasgow (Tyrell 1998 in Netto et al 2001 p3) showed that while respondents identified racism as one of the many contributory factors, family problems, loneliness and bereavement were cited as the main sources of their depression, fear and stress. The impact of these experiences on black peoples has silenced some counsellors. They have been unable to voice their lack of knowledge and experience in these areas. In many situations this has affected their emotional ability to verbalise their understanding of and empathise with African and Asian people's experiences.

The impact of a collective colonial memory has been woven through counsellor training and created a certain numbness and lack of voice in varying degrees for both black and white counsellors. Along with the numbness goes a general lack of voice in relation to black issues in counsellor client communication. I call this gagging, because this kind of silence is influenced by institutional racism and individual fear of addressing black issues.

The voice of colonialism and oppression puts people's backs up when discussed in psychological forums. It intrudes on the white therapist's persona with a legacy of guilt and black therapists may be reminded of the fear and loss associated with the pain and degradation of white supremacy. Perhaps that is why, as Ackbar suggests, it has not been sufficiently attended to in the history of psychotherapy and counselling training. There has also been a lack of theoretical models through which to study this subject.

In circumstances where I have been the only black voice challenging the lack of models in training provision, I have felt as though I was carrying the burden of change on my own back. This is where the history of institutional racism becomes an important issue to consider. It seems clear that African-Centred approaches would advocate that the effects of slavery and colonisation should be recognised as a key element in the processing of what I call 'black issues', whether with colleagues or in the consulting room or within training sessions Asian-Centred approaches advocate the importance of more present time concerns such as language, spirituality and confidentiality within their communities. Both approaches advocate the need to understand caste and colour divisions within these groups.

The voices of therapists trying to understand black issues in their client work must therefore be heard. For many therapists and counsellors opportunities for exploring black issues were not present during their training. This is a shared concern that needs expression and dialogue. I call this finding a voice.

Responses, such as willingness, compliance, resistance, curiosity, fear, denial and anger seem to be expressed when black issues are placed on the agenda. A few discussion sessions to assist openness about the complexities of this unfamiliar and often volatile territory are usually needed. Through these discussions, individuals gain a heightened awareness of their own personal identities and cultural oppressions. They are also encouraged to overcome their fears of having a dialogue about black issues with both black and white peers and opportunities for working with the cultural and racial elements in their practise are heightened.

I have used this paper to voice my understanding of the needs expressed by both experienced and trainee counsellors to find and listen to their own voices and fill this gap in their clinical practice and personal development. Rather than relying solely on case material about black clients, therapists' open dialogue assists greater self-reflection and ability to transfer their personal and sociological knowledge of black issues and the impact of racism into practice.|Galatians is a book deep in meaning for the Christian believer and it is vital to our faith. It is in Galatians that Paul declares, "I no longer live, but Christ lives in me." It is in Galatians that He encourages us on the Christian journey when he says, "Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up." In Galatians we are warned, "Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows." And, it is in Galatians that we understand the brotherhood of man; "There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus."

Galatians is the liberating epistle. It sets believers free from the demands, the requirements, and the prescriptions of the Old Testament Law. These burdens are replaced with the presentation of Jesus Christ as the all-sufficient Savior and the Holy Spirit as our divine energy and power. Paul wrote this letter to the Galatians because the people had their doubts and he dealt with their doubts candidly -- "It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery."

People define freedom in a variety of ways and it seems to mean different things to different people. Archibald MacLeish defines freedom as "the right to choose: the right to create for yourself the alternatives of choice. Without the possibility of choice and the exercise of choice a man is not a man but a member, an instrument, a thing." How ever we chose to define it, one thing is certain, freedom is scary.

We all want freedom, but it has its obligations and responsibilities. For example, when a child finally leaves home, he or she discovers that it is a lot different being on one's own that it is being at home with parents. This is why many of them return to the nest. Freedom overwhelms them. They learn that freedom is only the beginning; then comes the obligations and responsibilities, the discipline and sacrifice.

Everyone has something from which we want to be free. Most often, it is freedom from some form of control exerted over one's life. America fought for freedom from England, Blacks fought for freedom from slavery and white supremacy, women have fought for freedom from male dominancy and inequity and we all want to be free from the burden of rising taxes and escalating cost of living. Paul's problem however, was trying to get the new Christians to trust Christ to guide and sustain them as they assumed their new freedom from the Jewish law, which he found to be a challenging task.

Of course we all know that there is no such thing as absolute freedom. As long as we live in this world, we will always be obligated in some way. Just being alive obligates us to care for our physical and health needs. Being a part of a family requires certain responsibilities. On any job, there are limitations and boundaries. Moreover, simply being human means that we are bound by our inheritance (the kind of home training we had, the kind of education afforded us, the amount of security and love we were given as children and so forth). Many, unfortunately, are still enslaved by a wasted youth and they spend countless hours wondering what life would have been like had they been given a better start. But the point I am trying to make is that we are all freedom limited in some way or another.

Paul is assuring us in Galatians that Jesus can show us how to find a new freedom that is available to us. The people he preached to had been reared in synagogues, brought up under the law, raised in homes with long traditions. He showed them the freedom available to them to live above and beyond this background, to rise above their past, to unhinge their lives from their traditions, to take on Christ Jesus and the newness of life.

Paul is telling us that regardless of what it is that binds us, Jesus can show us the kind of freedom that gives power to choose, that inner sanctuary of the soul. He spoke from experience. He too had been bound and enslaved by his past. Paul as a young Rabbi was so violently against Christ that he set out to destroy the Christians. But he changed. He did not need a psychiatrist, psychologist, or social worker. One day he encountered Jesus. In Christ Jesus, Paul found the power to use his freedom and he changed. He said, "I can do everything through him who gives me strength."

When we talk about the freedom Christ gives, it doe not matter where we were born, what kind of raising we had, who our friends were, what people did to us, what kinds of names we were called, what kind of trouble we once got into, how low we sank or how far behind we fell. None of these things matter because when you add it all up, we still have some options left, some choices we can make.

There is a degree of freedom that God guarantees to all of us and with Jesus, we can find it and use it. God has given us the capacity to break the fetters and free ourselves. It is that bundle of human attributes that all of us have: our extraordinary power to think, to reason, to remember. It is our miraculous nervous system and the brain that elevates us above behavior by instinct to behavior that we choose from a range of choices. It is our creative powers of imagination, which enable us to know persons through literature and to enjoy places and events beyond our own personal experience.

God has given us the ability to make tools, to invent ways to reach Venus, to write poems, to compose symphonies, to conquer diseases, to create fellowship, to rid the world of war, hunger, ignorance, and illiteracy. And when we add it all up, we become cognizant of the fact that God in Christ has empowered us to reach higher standards, to revise our value system, to extinguish destructive relationships, to make a new beginning toward a strong and vital faith.

We are equipped adequately enough, but what many of us need is the spiritual energy, the power, the motivation, the spiritual rebirth that Christ provides. When Jesus is truly head of our lives and acknowledged as the Lord of our salvation, we will discover ourselves being drawn into His inexhaustible power and enabled to do all things in His strength.

Lastly, freedom is not only from something, but it is also freedom for something. Freedom in Christ is not just an unshackling but also an elevation. We are not jut set free, we soar.

After slaves fought for their freedom and the abolition of slavery accomplished in 1865, many of them walked right back into slavery. Though it was not slavery proper, it was the same existence. They were free on the official records, but not free in their hearts and minds. And then there were others who were free long before slavery was abolished. When the freedom bells rang and the jubilee songs filled the air, the truly free took flight and left their old identities behind. They had the freedom that Christ controls.

Galatians reminds us that even in the midst of life's chains, the answer is Jesus. His freedom lifts us to higher heights on this pilgrim journey.

"Slavery Chain"

Slavery chain done broke at last, broke

at last, broke at last,

Slavery chain done broke at last,

Going to praise God till I die

Way down in-a dat valley

Praying on my knees

Told God about my troubles,

And to help me ef-a He please

I did tell him how I suffer,

In de dungeon and de chain,

And de days were with head bowed down,

And my broken flesh and pain.

I did know my Jesus heard me,

'Cause de spirit spoke to me

And said, 'Rise my child, your chillun,

And you shall be free.

'I done 'p'int one mighty captain

For to marshall all my hosts

And to bring my bleeding ones to me

And not one shall be lost.'

Slavery chain done broke at last, broke

at last, broke at last,

Slavery chain done broke at last,

Going to praise God till I die

The Spirituals and the Blues

by James Cone, 1972|Larry King on CNN tackled the issue of gang violence on his program October 23, 2006. King gave statistics of a total of 708,000 state and local police against 731,500 gang members nationwide. Gang members now therefore outnumber the police in our country. Now what?

The president, in his State of the Union Address last month, announced a $150 million, three-year program to target at-risk youths and discourage them from joining gangs. Bush put the First Lady in charge of the program.

There are more than 21,500 gangs across the United States with about 731,500 members, according to a 2002 Justice Department report. Several criminologists claim gang membership is ballooning because of poverty and a rise in the country's immigrant population, coupled with the emergence of international gangs in areas like Los Angeles, Chicago and suburban Washington, D.C.

Though they are unable to give hard statistics, many law enforcement experts believe that gang activity is the leading contributor to black-on-black crime and a mushrooming illegal drug trade (according to Black America web).

I know in Orlando where I live it is becoming quite common to hear sirens day and night in the city streets. Helicopters fly over my neighborhood nearly daily (in middle-class America) chasing criminals. University High School this week had a stabbing when two young men fought over a young lady whom they both liked.

Earlier this year, an Indian young lady who attended my church was burned to death when she broke up with her boyfriend and he retaliated. What's going on?

Our nation's leaders had best pay attention to the terrorists at home rather than chase Muslim terrorists abroad. With the absence of fathers in our homes, youth need role models and big brothers like never before.

As one former gang member in the white supremacy movement told Larry King, he was transformed by Jesus. On the program he happily and wholeheartedly embraced the black brother without hesitation. Violence and hate is a matter of the heart. It is time we deal with the root of the problem and provide this younger generation the love and personal touch they are desperately crying out for.

I have seen great success with inmates while working as a volunteer in Orange County prisons, but I want to do a lot more. Let's come together and form an alliance to make a difference!|In our often chaotic world, geometric abstract art creates a sense of balance and structure. To the casual observer, however, it can sometimes seem too intellectual and detached from the natural world. It is often judged to be lacking in emotion, whereas the grand gestures of the abstract expressionist painters convince viewers more easily of their passion for life. However, to dismiss it in this way is to do it a great disservice and we need only to consider the motivation behind the work of some of the great geometric abstract artists to find proof of this.

Kasimir Malevich and Piet Mondrian are two of the earliest geometric abstract artists and both embraced the use of order and geometry in their paintings to convey emotion in its purest form. The boundaries they created in their abstract geometric paintings celebrate spiritual aspects of the human experience and go far beyond the world of our immediate understanding.

For Malevich, geometric abstraction was the perfect way to strip back the clutter of life and to get to the heart of what really mattered: the communication of pure artistic feeling. This 'supremacy' of feeling was fundamental to his work. (Malevich and his followers were known as Suprematists). He chose to use a simple black square against a white background to convey this. The black square expressed the feeling and the white surrounding it expressed the void beyond.

For Mondrian, a pattern of strong black lines encasing blocks of primary colour on a white background was the perfect visual language to convey his belief in a world beyond our reality. Theo van Doesburg, a co-founder with Mondrian and others of the De Stijl movement, was equally inspired by this abstraction of reality and use of geometric shapes and patterns.

Wassily Kandinsky, credited with producing the first abstract painting, using only shapes and form to express his visceral responses to music and colour, also embraced geometric abstract art, particularly during his period as a teacher at the Bauhaus.

These artists had none of the visual images of the geometry in nature so widely available now yet they had an innate understanding of the way in which geometric shapes and patterns were so fundamental to the structure of the world. Geometric abstract art was the equivalent of a universal visual and artistic language.

They demonstrated that triangles, squares, circles and straight lines carefully placed and repeated with precision can take us beyond the boundaries of our perceived reality. Their work offers the viewer an unexpected level of emotional engagement that is both moving and hypnotic.

A new generation of abstract geometric artists emerged in the 1950s and set out to dispense with the overspill of emotion they perceived in the work of the abstract expressionists of the time. Artists such as Kenneth Noland, Frank Stella and Al Held turned to geometric abstraction as a means of making their art less subjective. Colour is central to their work, as is their use of hard edges and the elimination of all signs of brushwork. Their paintings echo the purity of feeling that Kasimir Malevich sought to convey. There is simplicity and beauty in this approach and few artists demonstrate this better than Ellsworth Kelly whose large geometric shapes in vivid primary colours create a powerfully engaging visual experience.

The best geometric abstract art assures us that all is well with the world and reflects back to us something we innately understand: that our world is not the chaotic, disorganised place it sometimes seems but rather an exquisitely designed, well-ordered and balanced environment we can only marvel at.

To see a selection of geometric abstract art from the painters discussed in this article, visit |Ghost is an expression adequate to make anybody plug up with a manifestation of fear. Many inhabitants often have live encounters with them and whenever they commit to their memories about their experience with ghosts they quiver in terror. Diverse group of people have unusual viewpoints about ghosts. If we spotlight on the customary views, a ghost is typically outlined as a spirit or soul or a person or animal that is departed and can also materialize in the perceptible form or may bear resemblance to any living thing. The depictions of ghosts vary extensively ranging from translucent to visible shadows or even facade of any living individual. Many persons in the past or even today crack to ascertain touch with the spirit of a deceased individual and these intentional efforts are elected as necromancy. Literature throws light on many such shots for instance, the funeral rites, exorcisms and certain practices of spiritualism and ritual magic are the customs to make contact with the souls of dead.

Ghosts are normally pain staked to reside in meticulous settings and are allied with fussy stuffs and such spots share the group of haunted. These haunted buildings or haunted houses are themselves enough to startle anyone. The paranormal activities going inside such haunted places are commonly coupled with some tragedies like murder, suicide or any other violent actions. It is also promising that all such places may not allocate category of haunted. Many religions and cultures also believe that the souls prolong to exist forevermore in the haunted places.

The English word ghost is whispered to have advanced from the Old English word gast which in general is thought to have progressed from the Common Germanic theoretical word gaistaz. Apart from being used for epitomizing the spirits, the word gast is also used as a synonym for a Latin word spiritus meaning blast. Gast can be used to specify the souls of good and the evil. In Holy Bible the word gast is used to signify the demonic possession especially in the gospel of Matthew 12:43. During the Old English period this word was used to designate the spirit of God as Holy Ghost. The Dutch synonym spook has penetrated the English language of United States during the nineteenth century. The word shade portrays spirits of the underworld in the ancient Greek mythology. Haint is a synonym used for ghost in the regional language of the southern United States and haint tale is a regular attribute coupled with their literature and traditions. A German word poltergeist is often used for a spirit which bears the supremacy of swaying objects as well as screening its indiscernible charisma by movements. The word wraith is assumed to have originated in Scotland from the Scottish Romanticist literature during the eighteenth and nineteenth century that also embodies spirits. The same word was also used to indicate the aquatic spirits during the olden times in Scotland.

A very eminent Scottish poet John Mayne has used the term Bogie in his distinguished poem Halloween in 1780. The term revenant is used for a lifeless person who is thought to have revisited from dead to irk the living individuals and this word can be interrelated with the phrase fetch which is identified as a perceptible ghost. Gallup Poll News Service reports that the number of haunted houses, ghosts, communication with the dead and witches has amplified in the United States by the end of 1990. A topical report of Gallup poll in 2005 propounded that 32 percent of the Americans believe on the reality of ghosts. The stature of ghosts and demons in the form of transparent and paranormal entities is a universal cultural conviction and it is often believed to be involved with the ancestor worship. Ancestor worship is associated with rituals to thwart the revenants and other rancorous souls from antagonizing the existing folks.

Such sacraments were often concerned with sacrifices in the form of giving food or drink to the souls of the dead or even using magical banishment. The ceremonies of feeding the spirits of dead are still in practice in the Chinese culture and even the western world today exults the All Souls Day for the spirit of deceased. The magical banishment is still a part of burial customs of many cultures even today. An anthropologist James Frazer during the nineteenth century has also avowed about the existence of souls as vivacious glooms in his classical work entitled The Golden Bough. Ancient literature also corresponds to human souls as birds or some other animals and even the verifications also advocate that human souls are having the strict body structure like that of the dead creature and also wear the equivalent clothing that they wore at the time of their death. A book entitled Egyptian Book of the Dead illustrates life of the souls after death and symbolizes that the souls have the similar dressing sense as well as the hair style which they had when they were alive.

According to one of the well-liked ideas ghosts are made up of airy and murky material. Anthropologists deem that ghosts, accurately talking are the souls of dead persons very prominent in the ancient history as white mists. Many conventional beliefs report, ghosts as souls of the dead lodging on earth either for taking vengeance or incarcerated for the bad things they did during their existence. Sometimes ghosts are also evaluated with appalling omens leading to death. In rural areas souls of dead ladies dressed in white have been noticed and it is said that they have died due to calamity or something bad had transpired with them. The obsessed tales of such white ladies are admired all over the globe. These white ladies are believed to have been deceived either by their husbands or fianc and are believed as heralds of death who take retribution from the family of coupled persons. If any one of the linked person's family sees them he or she is at the jeopardy of being dead. The myths of ghost ships are very popular during the eighteenth century as depicted in the Flying Dutchman. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Coleridge also gives a picture of ghost ships.

The Mesopotamian religions explicitly the religions of Sumer, Babylon, Assyria and other early states in Mesopotamia are encumbered with the citations of ghosts. The traces of beliefs of these religions even got continuation in the Abrahamic religions. These religions believed that ghosts are created at the time of death of any individual and these beliefs later on traveled towards Netherlands where people started believing that ghosts have figures akin to the living entities. The relatives of the dead persons started giving food and drinks to the souls in order to set them free. It was also believed that the ghosts can bring infirmity of any individual. Ancient Egyptian literature also believes that ghosts are the souls of dead which bear the prospective to harm anyone and there is also a leeway of second death. The Egyptian culture believed for more than 2,500 years about the consequences of afterlife. The Egyptian Book of the Dead accentuates some of the beliefs of different periods of ancient Egyptian history. Even in the modern world people believe that the mummies also materialize in the form of ghosts and take reprisal and these facts are often shown in the horror movies also.

The Bible and the Hebrew Torah also demonstrate some of the quotations about spirits and some supernatural behaviuors. The first book of Samuel in the Holy Bible expresses about King Saul who visited the Witch of Endor to talk with the spirit of the dead prophet Samuel. The New Testament of Bible also describes about the statement of Jesus where he tells his disciples that he will be in present in the form of spirit after resurrection. The disciples of Jesus thought that Jesus is a ghost when he came to them by walking on water. Christian belief is in opposition to the act of communicating with the souls of dead.

Even the book of first Timothy also describes that some souls are evil and engross living individuals from God. The Book of second Corinthians also represents that Satan himself predicts that he is the Light of the World. The people of ancient Rome believed that ghosts take revenge from people and impair them by scuffing their body and even chuck them in the graves. Plutarch has represented about the ghost of an executed man at Chaeronea during the first century AD. The appalling and strident thuds produced by the ghost made people of the town to shut the doors of the building and houses.

Pliny Younger also describes about a haunted house in Athens where a chained ghost shrieks in pain. These sounds ruined when the skeleton of the man was given reburial. Plautus and Lucian have also described about haunted houses. Lucian of Samosata was the first person during the second century AD who expressed his incredulity in spirits. A Christian priest, Constantius of Lyon, during the fifth century AD documented about the case of a ghost who was reprehensively buried. The haunting wrecked when the skeleton was recovered and given reburial. Homer has defined ghosts in his creation Odyssey and Iliad as a white coloured vapour. He states that ghosts have very diminutive interface with the living world and in general do not panic humans and often emerge in the form that escorted them to death. By the end of the fifth century BC the ghosts of the ancient Greek literature have been noticed to scare humans and were also accountable for evil or good works. The spirits were reflected to linger around cemeteries, haunted houses so humans avoided lodging near such places. The ancient Greeks celebrated festivals in which the dead souls were requested for food and drink and then they were called again next year for the same purpose. A play entitled Oresteia was the first act in which ghosts first appeared in the world of fiction.

Medieval Europe believed on two types of ghosts namely the souls of the dead and demons. The souls of dead were thought to have crossed the threshold after death in order to solve an unambiguous problem while the demons existed to entice or terrify humans only. The souls of dead could spell out their rationale through living and can leave the body of living with the help of Jesus Christ while the demons can be banished through Holy name. The ghosts were dispensed in the category of Purgatory where they were castigated for the crimes they have done during their lifetime. Ghosts have been discerned to ask the livings to pray for them so that their anguish may come to an end and they have also been seen praying to God to set them free. The ghosts of the medieval Europe predominantly those of the Victorian age were more alarming and often have been observed to wrestle with the living persons unless and until a priest comes for their rescue. They have been described as misty shadows and often dressed in grey rags. Most of the ghosts have been found to be the spirits of males. Ghostly armies have been heard to fight in a battle during night in a forest at Wandlebury, near Cambridge, England. Arabian Nights also features haunted houses during the ninth century.

Renaissance magic has penetrated the tradition of necromancy. A Swiss reformed Pastor Ludwig Lavater has focused about this act in his book entitled Ghosts and Spirits Walking by Night. Child ballad Sweet William's Ghost states the story of a ghost who returns to beg a woman to set him free from the pledge of marrying her so that his soul may rest in peace. He also states that if the woman will rebuff the promise his soul will moan in pain forever. This imitates a popular British belief that the dead haunted their lovers if they got committed with a new love without their consent. The Unquiet Grave expresses a more convoluted nature of ghosts. It underscores that ghosts can be provoked by the heartache and bereavement of their loved ones for them.

Spiritualism can be measured as a monotheistic belief or a part of religion converging humans to rely on God but data of haunting by the ghosts or spirits and without exchanging a few words with them it is not feasible to get knowledge of what happens after life. Spiritualism is believed to have instigated in the United States which attained its crest during the 1840 and 1920s principally in the English nations. By the end of 1897 there were more than eight million cohorts of spiritualism in the United States as well as in Europe. Spiritism is essentially based on five books of Spiritist Codification written by French educator Hypolite Lon Denizard Rivail. His work was based on both scientific as well as philosophical truths which were later on liked by a number of authors. The number of supporters of spiritism was in a great deal in Spain, United States, Canada, Japan, Germany, France, England, Argentina, Portugal and especially Brazil.

The scientific principles affirm something bizarre about the subsistence of ghosts. Joe Nickell, a spokesperson of Committee for Skeptical Inquiry recommends that there is no scientific confirmation for the survival of ghosts and spirits. Mundane corporal elucidations and precincts of human philosophy can account for configuration of obscure metaphors which we judge as ghost for instance, conversions in air pressure inside a room are liable for the banging of door and lights from a momentary car when smack the window of a home can result in creation of redundant images. Skeptics believe that pareidolia is a property of a person to be acquainted with some of the blueprints while kept in dim light condition is what we consider as ghost. Nickell advocates that ghost is nothing but simply misleading of vision especially at night when brain is exhausted and is more prone to misconstrue sounds and sights. We can say that the sensitivity of human peripheral vision is responsible for construction of typical descriptions that we consider ghost. Another researcher, Michael Persinger of Laurentian University, Canada states that the changes in the geomagnetic fields of earth bring amendments in the temporal lobes of brain which are coupled with the imagination of something haunted. Sound can also be responsible for something extraordinary for example, Richard Wiseman wraps up that infrasound in a room can bring a human to fill with anxiety, extreme sorrow, a feeling of being watched, or even the chills. Carbon monoxide poisoning also impedes the auditory and visual alertness of brain so ensuing in unusual imagination.

Gigantic numerals of Malay ghost myths are admired which are still customary in the contemporary states of Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei which have been later on fashioned by Hindu, Muslim and Buddhist beliefs. The tales of women in the form of women like Pontianak and Penanggalan are still in the reminiscence of people of some regions. Ghosts are still an accepted theme in the Malaysian and Indonesian movies. The beliefs on the ghosts are still in practice in Polynesian culture. Chinese culture is also loaded with testimonials of ghosts and Confucius even states that people must admire God and Ghosts and must keep themselves away from them. Many of the beliefs about ghosts in the Chinese culture are also alleged in the neighbouring countries like Japan and south-east Asia. These beliefs are frequently based on ancestor worship known as Taoism. Later on these beliefs got prejudiced by Buddhism and are now popular as Chinese Buddhist beliefs. Many Chinese people today celebrate a festival where they believe that it is probable to get in touch with the souls of their adored ones. Ghosts are critical elements of Chinese literature and movies at the moment.

The literature of the Indian subcontinent promotes the subsistence of ghosts as mystic images of a dead person bearing the prospective to impair someone. These uncanny creatures are dubbed as bhoot. The soul of person who has been a spectator of brutal death or death due to some unsettled affairs or unacceptable rituals of funeral is predisposed to alter into a ghost. Hindu mythology believes on an evil spirit known as Baital which takes demonic tenure of corpses and Pishacha is a tissue eating evil spirit. The Mexican culture is also not unharmed by the stories of ghosts. Ghosts ought to have an exceptional declaration in the Tibetan Buddhist religion which forecasts that a human after death enters the world of ghosts. A famished ghost has a petite throat and a hefty stomach which on no account fills so the ghost can never be contented. Ghosts can be exterminated by some rituals. Dalai Lama envisages that the spirit of a Tibetan monk of the seventeenth century, Dorje Shugden is a malevolence spirit which is conscientious for the gash in the Tibetan migr community.

Ghosts are very imperative essence of literature as well as mythologies of approximately all nations. In English literature, Shakespeare's story entitled The Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark also spotlights on ghosts. In The Tragical History of Hamlet the ghost requests Prince Hamlet to take the reprisal of his assassination from his uncle King Claudius. In another conception of Shakespeare, Macbeth, a man named Banquo was massacred and became a ghost. Ghosts have been a vital part of British ballads during the sixteenth and seventeenth century principally in the Border Ballads. Ballads of this type usually embrace The Unquiet Grave, The Wife of Usher's Well and Sweet William's Ghost which depict about the ghosts who are interested in returning back to their lovers or children. In the ballad King Henry, a ravenous ghost demolishes king's horse and forces him into bed and the king rouses from sleep and investigates for the ghost which renovates into a gorgeous woman. Harry Price, Peter Underwood were most well-liked professional parapsychologists during 1920s and 1950s who had shared their incidents as well as a number of anecdotes about ghost encounters. Children's most popular ghost story for example, Casper the Friendly Ghost was also animated in the form of a movie in 1995. A very trendy Indian movie, Mahal became one of the prime box office hit in 1949 starring Ashok Kumar and Madhubala. The movie was directed by Kamal Amrohi and was based on reincarnation. The movie unbolted a new track for Indian gothic fiction.

We can terminate by saying the imprints that we scrutinize in our day-to-day life are in fact not ghosts because the imprints like ships, trains are all inanimate objects. Here we can ask how they came into action? Well the researchers advocate that they move due to some sort of energy stockpiled in finicky locations. Now another question comes into mind is that what sort of energy? Some say electromagnetic fields and electrostatic forces are to be blamed for such actions. Researchers imply that human body safeguards electromagnetic energy and ghosts caught by the EMF detectors support this analysis. Duncan McDougall performed an experiment to verify that ghosts have some body mass. He calculated the body weight of five patients before and after death and accomplished that the patients have lost some ounces before death but what happens after death no one knows. The science falls short to remark on afterlife possessions and ghosts are still a subject matter of anonymity. Research is going on and in the coming years we anticipate that we will accomplish something to know about it.|Each time that white America excluded African Americans they held themselves back ten-fold. Ample support for this analysis is found everywhere, but not so glaring as is seen in sports and entertainment, the two industries where opportunities for blacks have always been plentiful and today is wide open. We must acknowledge that opportunities now exist in almost every arena; they're just not as expansive as they should be. The country's leaders and politicians who've done and do the bulk of negotiating and planning for our serious inclusion into American power and prosperity always seem to find ways not to have it happen on their watch. America, as a nation, continues to be the sad loser.

America may be mighty, powerful, dominant, wealthy and a whole host of strong adjectives that exalt America in the eyes of the world. America is even almost great, but not quite. You see, the African American struggle for freedom and the attainment of our birthright is and has always been the struggle to free the total greatness of America. Ironically, it is countless prominent American leaders and politicians that have vigorously resisted this struggle and, in many ways, are worse enemies of America than can ever be found abroad. One of our greatest spiritual leaders, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., struck at the very heart of white American hypocrisy when he challenged America to live up to the "true meaning" of its creed, understanding so keenly that America would never achieve true greatness and never be as rich as she could be as long as we were excluded and held down.

While the public rhetoric of America's leaders and politicians has changed the same practice of excluding blacks from true power merely saturated itself into mainstream America, major corporations and American institutions so insidiously that racism is virtually standard operating procedure in the sense that exclusion of African Americans is still the most predictable result, statistical or otherwise. All one has to do is open their eyes and look around. What you'll see, among other things, is that almost any black comedian can have their own television show, but not one of us is a state governor and not ten of us hold any position of "real" shot calling power in American policy here or abroad.

RESULTS OF ILLITERACY

Sink your teeth into this one: for hundreds of years a people are forbidden to learn how to read. Then other people point at them and call them intellectually inferior, ignorant and dumb. Well, duh! Who did they expect to find? Condoleezza Rice? Harold Ford Jr.? Or maybe this is what other people wanted us to believe about ourselves permanently. The smart ones knew that wouldn't happen, but they also knew that many of us would buy into it and perpetuate illiteracy and ignorance through our offspring, enough that it would saddle us as a people for generations to come. And why not? Was it not the dominant message we received? Was it not bred into our psyche? Was it not the very air we breathed? I will never hold it against any African American who walks through the door of opportunity provided by sports and entertainment, even as it helps perpetuate the Bojangles and dumb jock myths. All of us are not destined to attend colleges and universities, but can you imagine what a place America would be if we were allowed to read those 200 years between 1660 and 1860? Or if Native Americans, Africans and Europeans had lived in harmony instead of hell? No, America is not great and America is not rich. America is mighty, powerful, dominant and wealthy. America's greatness and richness is deferred. Those rewards will not be released until the moral and constitutional contract America has with all its citizens is fulfilled.

SPORTS AND ENTERTAINMENT

When intellectual inferiority theories abound is it any wonder that African Americans are readily honored as the undisputed kings and queens of the physical plane? Running, jumping, singing and dancing. America, after having a mini Civil War over whether to allow blacks to participate along side whites on sports fields, finally surrendered the major American sports (baseball, basketball, football) to the "more physically gifted." After shattering the theory that we couldn't compete physically the inferiority theorists retreated to the position that we'll never be coaches, managers, quarterbacks, executives or owners. Need I say anymore about sports?

Music and entertainment in general took a more low key, though no less sinister journey. While the talent itself couldn't be corralled it was controlled and looted. In film the main thing to control was the images, so that blacks were servants, buffoons or low lifes, while blacks in the music industry were robbed, imitated and kept out of the American mainstream. Today we jump for joy that those days are over, but are they? Yes, to an extent, but as we continue to tear down stereotypes let's not forget that sports, music and entertainment don't run governments. Just ask Jesse Owens, Paul Robeson, Jackie Robinson and countless other warriors and freedom fighters who tried to translate their celebrity into political and social change. Read their histories. They were met with the most ferocious racists venom imaginable, often by those who cheered them on while delighting in their physical talents. The message was this: "Don't get uppity; you may be famous, but you're still a nigger."

This long stemmed desire to keep us "in our place" is nothing but residual slave master mentality and when we assert ourselves powerfully we bring out the worst in white America. The urge to control the slave and all profits derived therefrom is still very present. It was okay for Jesse Owens to symbolically defeat Aryan white supremacy in Berlin, but back in America he may as well have been Emmitt Till. Even today America uses black olympians to dominate the world in certain events and posture itself as some model of diversity and brotherhood, while maintaining a solidly segregated society from top to bottom. Our lawmakers and politicians may say one thing out their mouths, but as conditions for African Americans don't change or move at excruciating molasses paced rates, the only thing that rings true in their words is "I represent the sentiments of the people." And the sentiments of the people seem to be "let 'em run, jump, sing and dance, but that's all."

THESE THINGS TAKE TIME

While it's true you can't undo hundreds of years of conditioning and tradition in a few short years you can change quarterbacks at any time in the game. This is to say that we can no longer allow the government or anyone else to micro manage our upliftment as a people. Not Democrats with all their feel good rhetoric and not Republicans with that subliminal "party of Lincoln" crap. Have we not been insulted long enough?

We can make America great and rich in just twenty years time if we get firmly on the road to taking our birthright of wealth by 2015. Like a child refusing to swallow castor oil America will not bring herself to do right by us. America is still too sick and too arrogant to allow herself to truly heal. Therefore, we have to force it down America's throat because all of our health, well being and survival is at stake. Reparations for slavery is just too bitter a pill for America and it's not one that we're in a position to force. Self Reparations is in our power and we have every right to repair ourselves. More importantly, to solidify our place in history as builders rather than beggars of wealth, we need to do this for ourselves infinitely more than America needs to give it to us. America needs her medicine, for sure, but we can't stay sick demanding that she get well.

DOES APOLOGY = REPARATIONS?

Some reparations advocates and lawyers believe that an official presidential apology for slavery will clear the way for reparations; that the federal government would, in effect, open itself up to such liability. This is the litigation road map they salivate for. I say be careful what you wish for. One of these days an American president will stand up and give the most heartfelt, even tearful, apology the country has ever seen, sending the advocates and lawyers down a long, winding road of litigation with no promise of victory, while at the same time placing us firmly back on the road of waitin' and beggin'. And if you think that litigation isn't a form of beggin' you'd better think again. You can have every legal argument in your favor, every legal precedent supporting your brief and a judge or panel of judges can still rule against you. Be careful what you wish for.

As for the concept of reparations as a legitimate form of redress, America isn't at all opposed to it in theory or practice, just not to us. America will even advocate for reparations to other people for historical grievances or modern day atrocities. America just reserves the right to decide, as with most other things, how and when it applies to her. You can do that when you're the biggest bully on the block. We have to learn to respect that and we have to learn how to still get ours.

I AIN'T MAD AT YA, PER SE

There's nothing wrong with telling things like it is or like it was. That's why I don't sugar coat slavery, Jim Crow, discrimination, racism, stupidity or whatever. Slavery was what it was. America came along, put her program down and came up lovely. We can stand around and cry foul or we can put our program down. Truthfully speaking, America didn't do anything different than what nations have been doing since the dawn of man: hittin' each other over the head and battling for supremacy of the globe. Egypt, Greece, Rome, Carthage, Spain, England, Russia, Germany. Everybody wants to rule the world and almost everyone has tried. America is in a long line of conquerors and a long line of slave holders. When we keep it in a historically raw context, guess what? No crying allowed. Carthaginians (Africans) ruled Italy and parts of Europe for more than 300 years and the Moors (Africans) ruled Spain and other territories for more than 700 years. Don't even mention Egypt (Africans) and the thousands of years they ruled practically everything and everyone in the Middle East, Mediterranean region and pretty much all of sub Saharan Africa.

Many of us will say "but the African nations ruled in a civilized way." So! Even if that were true it didn't mean those were the rules for everyone forever and now on, Amen. Just because you hit me over the head with a rock doesn't mean I can't chose to use a boulder on you or the next man. All nations ruled and conquered in a manner they chose for themselves. Even today with all kinds of rules of engagement and Geneva Conventions nothing says that battle has to be "even steven." Japan didn't have an atomic bomb and Iraq didn't have air or naval power; did any of that stop America from using hers? Case closed.

America has the superior weaponry, superior intelligence capabilities, superior everything. What I say to America is this: I ain't mad at ya; you did your thing and I respect the game the way it's played. You did plenty of foul things, especially to my people and for the most part you've gotten away with it. Now it's time for us to stick a knife in the pie and cut out the slice that's called our birthright. You'll benefit too because you tax everything that moves in your domain. No problem; just let us live too. This is the proper respect any bona fide bully, mobster or superpower is due. Then you move on your endeavors and see what kind of respect you get in return.

PAID IN FULL

America's forthcoming greatness is inextricably tied to African Americans being paid in full. The American way is to create your own wealth and we've proven we can do that. More important than creating the wealth is utilizing it to compete equally in all facets of American life, thereby contributing to the overall health and vibrancy of our country. We must abandon all notions that suggest we are not Americans; we are indeed original Americans and to America our loyalty must lie. That's not to say that we shouldn't continue to acknowledge our African essence and all its endowments, but the sooner we start seeing and negotiating with reality the way it is rather than how we think it should be the sooner we'll get on the road to building the reality we know we deserve.|What is also not explained to the average U.S citizen when shown statistics displaying each ethnic groups level of progress in comparison to whites is that shown statistics are greatly skewed in favor of whites and near white groups by causing blacks to appear to possess numerical supremacy or equivalence to other groups without stating the actual population level of each group; thus, blacks would appear to possess greater numerical values in terms of: lack of educational achievement, dependency upon social services such as welfare, and violent or drug related crimes.

What white liberals, conservatives and their allies fail to site within their statistical comparison of whites, various ethnic groups and blacks is that if one group possesses a higher population level than another; presenting these groups in terms of percentages without also presenting their population level alongside those percentages often misleads the average individual into making unpleasant assumptions about groups which they already possess a negative opinion of. In short, statistical percentages are often used to create an emotional response within the average U.S citizen as opposed to a reasoned conclusion that incorporates a fair unbiased perspective of that group's success or failure in those areas previously mentioned in this article.

Within his book "Afraid of the Dark" Jim Meyers, formerly the chief writer of the USA Today series "Race and Sports" makes three important statements that are often intentionally forgotten by legislatures, politicians and Immigration activists 1) "there is a 6.4-1 ratio of whites to blacks within the U.S" 2) "most people on welfare are not black! 3) "blacks' are disproportionately represented on welfare rolls. An interpretation of Meyers third statement could be that since blacks are numerically outnumbered by whites there will always be "greater white than black representation" in various areas across the board; thus, statistics that paint blacks as having a disproportionately negative effect upon U.S society in relation to all other groups - especially whites - are actually false and are used to create a negative emotional response within all other groups, so that they may be manipulated by white neo-liberals and conservatives into voting negatively on various solutions that could solve problems within the U.S political economy and alleviate racial tensions between all groups; while making it possible for larger numbers of blacks to leave poverty, welfare and crumbling inner-city neighborhoods as they become assimilated into the U.S economy in greater numbers as full-fledged consumers and contributors.

However; without a political, and socio-economic boogey man, it would be extremely difficult for white neo-liberal and conservatives to manipulate whites and non-black minority groups into making harmful political and socio-economic decisions that damage the country's infra-structure heighten racial tensions between ethnic groups, but provide them and their corporate constituents with socio-economic and political self gain at everyone else's expense; especially the expense of black Americans.

If whites outnumber blacks 6.4 - 1; what threat is there to whites from affirmative action; especially since the rate of incarceration for white men was "736 per 100,000, in comparison to black men which is 4,789 per 100,000" Sabol, William J., PhD, Couture, Heather, and Harrison, Paige M., Bureau of Justice Statistics, Prisoners in 2006 (Washington, DC: US Department of Justice, December 2007). In other words, there is 1 white male for every 6 black males that are incarcerated. Due to the incarceration rate of white to black men - there would not be enough black men - despite affirmative action present within the U.S labor pool to seriously challenge their white male counterparts for positions of employment within the U.S economy. Ironically, those ethnic groups that are capable of numerically displacing white men within the U.S labor force are those considered white upon U.S census reports; thus, extended white privilege and whom white neo-liberals and conservatives consistently undermine immigration policies for. According to Richard Adams Blog (et. al. Latinos and Hispanics Become the Largest Minorities in America's Cities Apr. 14, 2011) "since the previous census in 2000, the Latino population has been the fastest growing ethnic group within the US, and now makes up more than 16% of the total population: a total of 50 million people, or one in every six Americans. In comparison, what the census calls "black or African American" now account for 12% of the US population, for a total of 39 million."

Thus; by constantly undermining its own immigration laws; while refusing to acknowledging the serious impact that both illegal and legal immigrants are having upon blacks within the U.S, white neo-liberals and conservatives have actually increased interracial rivalries between U.S based ethnic groups and the white working poor; while simultaneously creating deepening rifts within the U.S political economy that threaten to create conditions for racial and cultural balkanization with the U.S as evidenced by various states within the U.S becoming dominated by particular racial groups instead of equally dispersed throughout America.|What Is Commitment?

Some people think that it springs from a sense of duty but it takes more than that. Commitment can be likened to the mortar that binds the bricks of a sturdy house. Mortar is made from a combination of ingredients such as sand, cement, and water. Similarly, commitment is formed from a combination of factors such as, trust and friendship. But that bond can equally be weakened, lets find out how.

The Challenges:

Commitment in itself requires a lot of hard work, and self Sacrifice, and readiness to forgo your own preferences so to please your mate. Although some might think that the idea of pleasing the other partner than oneself and giving without asking back is outdated and out of fashion, but if your family happiness is important to you, then the principle of self sacrifice will not be option to you. Marriage also demands a lot of hard work and patience, in some cases even marriage mates who are unselfish do not always acknowledge each other anxieties or value their mates sacrifices. it could be disastrous because when a couple fails to show appreciation for each other, their marriage is bound to cause them tribulation in their flesh than it would otherwise. so in other for your marriage to survive hard times and thrive smoothly, you need to develop a long term view of your relationship. But you might be committed to your relationship and your mate is not, so how can you equally make your mate to be committed to the relationship as well?

How To Strengthen Commitment

1). Make Your Marriage A Priority: we all have priorities, and we all equally have scale of preference, to maintain a healthy family life, your marriage should come second to nothing in your overall scale of preference (you can read the bible book of Philippians 1:10) the bible calls it more important thing. God also values the way husband and wife treat each other. And you gain favor from God when you treat each other with respect. Your mate should come first in anything you do in your life. Try and ask yourself, How much time do I set aside for my mate? Ask yourself again, what specific thing have I done to reassure my mate that we are still good friend.The amount of time you invest in your relationship really matters to your mate because it shows how much committed you are to the relationship.

Try and find out from your mate to know how the other partner feels you are taking the relationship, to do this in a practical way, take a piece of paper and write down the following, Money, Work, Entertainment, Marriage, and Friends. Then mark what you believe to be your spouses priorities and ask your mate to do the same, then exchange the list, by so doing you will find out what your mate feels is taking more of your attention, then discuss with your mate to find out if there is a way to make amend that is if something else seems to be taking priorities other than your mate. Also try to find out what catches more of your mate interest in other to make him or her happier.

2) Avoid All Forms Of Infidelity: Try and avoid anything that might lead to unfaithfulness. if we remember the words of Jesus in the Bible book of (matthew5:28)when you keep looking at a woman to have passion for her you have already committed adultery with her in your heart, and that applies to women too. Adultery is a seed, when it is sown in the heart and is regular watered then it becomes fertile, then the heart will be led astray. Pornography is one tool that can lead the heart astray, some think that it is an adult movie, but truthfully, it is a film for young children and youth who are scared of tomorrow. So for you to avoid infidelity in your marriage, you must make a solemn vow never to watch pornography with or without your mate.

Dangers of pornography: It presents women as mere sex toys, and the performances there might be difficult for your mate to carry out, and you may start feeling you married the wrong person because the Bible says that expectation postponed is making the heart sick. So pornography presents a feeling of self worthlessness to the one watching it. So try and make a covenant with your eyes never to view anything displeasing to your mate present or not.

Try and guard your heart from forming an inappropriate attachment to a member of the opposite sex. you might consider it to be a harmless friendship, but remember that you can not tell the other person mind and motive, and secondly, the heart is very deceptive and can lead one astray before one can get hold of his senses.

Ask your self the following questions: To whom am I most attracted to, my spouse or to someone else? With who do I share good news first-my spouse or someone else? if my mate ask me to limit my contact with an associate of the opposite sex, how would I react? would I be resentful or would I happily make the requested change? These and many more are what you ask yourself to evaluate your relationship with anyone other than your mate.

If you find yourself attracted to a member of the opposite sex or anyone other than your mate, then you should limit your contact with that one to only what is necessary and keep all encounters on purely professional level. Try not to focus on ways you think this person is superior to your mate. Instead focus on your mates positive qualities. Then try also to reflect on the basic reasons why you fell in love with your mate then ask yourself if those beautiful attributes has been lost or is it just you who has failed to see them anymore.

Take the initiative to make whatever needed adjustment your relationship would need to survive any great storm in your marriage.

Whether your marriage is stable or strained, your mate need to know that you are committed to making the marriage a success. Try as hard as you to convince your mate that you want your marriage to succeed no matter what comes it way.

Divorce should not be an option when there is a difficulty in your marriage make sure you try to resolve all minor problems before they blow up and become bigger problems that can lead to dissolving of a happy union, remember also that God is the originator of marriage, so when there is a heavy storm in the boat of a marriage then practical advice should be sort from the bible.

Read this book and apply all its advice and you find yourself more committed to your mate, and you derive the best from your mate and that will lead to a more fulfilling and happy marriage. In a marriage, misunderstanding that can sometimes lead to a quarrel is not always unusual especially when the couples just got married. these two individuals(husband and wife) are people from different family background, race, religion, ethnic, and so many differences that might exist between them before they married. in each of the households issues are handled differently matters are treated in different ways, standards and values are different, with different upbringing and training.

With the above enumerations you can be able to deduce that a misunderstanding or even quarrel must exist between them till they understand each other perfectly, accept their new roles as members of a new family and create a new set of standards and values.

When couples get married, there is always struggle and battle for supremacy, who should set acceptable standards and values, who should lead, and who should be lead? those are always subject for their battles for supremacy. cultures vary from place to place about the acceptable answer as to who should lead, but our concentration here is not who should lead, but how to resolve a resultant dispute that might arise in a family.

There are practical advice to follow, like the bible says, women should be in subjection to their own husbands. from that statement its obvious that the man should take the lead.

When you get married, there are certain characters your spouse will exhibit that you would never believe he is capable of. this happens because a relationship is like looking at a white paper with little stain on it from a distance, you can hardly see the stain, so when in courtship, those traits that are like a stain on a white paper will never show until after marriage, when you bring the white paper closer you will be able to see the stain, likewise after marriage when you start living together you will then see those bad behaviors you never knew existed.

When there is a misunderstanding, try to settle it before it will generate to a quarrel, if your partner exhibits fits of anger and start raing abusive speech on you, it takes only your inner strength to be able to avoid picking a quarrel and returning the insult.

What you need do is, no matter what he says, before answering, smile, make sure you smile deeply and also from the heart, then take a deep breath in, and then exhale gently, then with your smile still on you, try to sue for peace.

When you do that and you get the process your partner will notice that you are not in the mood for a fight and will surely be embarrassed and also sue for peace, even apologizing and asking for forgiveness.|Using Traditional Cultural Practices and Values that have been discarded to improve and strengthen Parental Practices - Using Afrikan Jamaican cultural heritage as an example

"Culture is to people like water is to fish, invisible, all pervasive and essential." Professor Wade Nobles

Everyone has a culture, the question is, are we in the right culture?

Introduction

This paper is designed to provide practical tips and advice for Black parents seeking to improve their parenting practice. Parenting is a craft that is taught and learnt within a cultural context. It is the author's belief that Black children should be raised within a Black culture if they are to grow into fully developed (emotionally, psychologically, spiritually and physically) human beings and it is the abandonment of traditional Afrikan cultural practices and values that is a major contributor to Black people's inability to effectively resist the belief system referred to as Racism or White Supremacy that controls so much of what takes place in the world today.

There are set out in this paper, examples of cultural practices and values, taken from Afrikan Jamaican culture, which if reinstated would bring about immediate, significant improvement in parent/child relationships in the Afrikan community in the UK. Although taken from Jamaica as an example, these values/practices are Afrikan cultural retentions which survived the Mangalize (sometimes called Black Holocaust) and can be found right across the Afrikan world.

TOP TIPS

oYour children are not your private property - 'It takes a whole village to raise a child and many compounds to make a village'(Afrikan proverb). Any adult should be able to speak to you or your child about your child's behaviour without automatically receiving a hostile response, since what your child does affects the wider community; not just you. oBig people's Talk - Certain conversations are not suitable for children/young people. As Jamaicans say 'Force ripe never good.' oMe an yu is not Quabs/Size - Do not abrogate your responsibilities as a parent with liberal notions of treating your children as small adults. The tail does not wag the lion and your children will never be size with you. Parenting is not a democracy. oIf you are a day older you have a responsibility to the younger one - This idea comes from the Afrikan cultural practice of age grading. Our culture is to teach the older child to take care of the younger ones. oProverbs and Parables - Afrikans all over the world teach morals and values via proverbs and parables. The Anancy stories which originated in West Afrika and were taken across the Atlantic are great examples. Use proverbs, parables and stories to teach ancestral wisdom. E.g. 'Patient Man ride Donkey, the fool will always walk.' oAuntie, Uncle or Mr and Mrs - Why are our children now calling adults, even elders, by their first name? Afrikans believe in age grading and respect for elders. We believe in non-biological aunties and uncles. Let's re-teach these principles. oEating together - Families that eat together (with the TV off) stay together. Everyone is busy, however we need to find some time to come together and talk. oBed time - Children need more sleep than adults. This includes teenagers. A five year old child needs around 13 hours sleep a night. If a young person is still growing they need more sleep than an adult. oBad Company - Parents need to get to know their children's friends and the parents of these friends. Make a point to introduce yourself to your child's friends' parents. Children are always in communication with each other, parents also need to talk to each other. Remember 'The Fruit never falls far from the tree.' oRebuilding the Extended Family - Remember when family and friends used to just turn up and they would be welcome and there would be food in the Dutch pot for them? Let's try to visit family and friends more often, go on group holidays together and rebuild our extended family (non-biological as well as biological). oHousehold Chores - All children should have age appropriate chores for which they should not be paid. This is about Ujima (Collective Work and Responsibility). Boys should not be excused from housework. oControl of Media - There is a media onslaught promoting a degenerate 'Black' sub-culture. Do not put TVs in your children's bedroom, it is hard enough to control their media diet without adding to the problem. Watch their favourite programmes with them and decode the imagery with them. Do not allow them to watch particular films just because their friends have watched them. Their friends' parents do not necessarily share your value system. Listen to your child's CD collection. Do not allow 'slackness' to be played in your house even if they will hear it outside. Hold firm to what is acceptable within your house. Reconsider your own media diet and the values you are being exposed to. Try listening to conscious Black media e.g. internet radio stations such as  |Looking at what has happened to Zimbabwe since Robert Mugabe assumed control of that country over twenty years ago is very depressing. There are times when I am tempted to write to him to tell him what I think of him and what he has done to that nation. But he doesn't know me and how would such a letter reach him?

But I write to him everyday in my mind and in one of those letters I would say to him: "I have been meaning to write to you for some time now, but what with the mass murder by Bush and Blair in Iraq and all manner of grotesqueries spawned by that dastardly act, I have been somewhat otherwise occupied.

However, I said to myself just today, "This pushing-it-off business ends now. I have to drop Robbie a line - and what better time than the present."

So, here it is. It's a bit long so, if you want, do get a glass of whatever it is that presidents-for-life drink.

Knowing you, I believe you will take particular exception to my addressing you as "Robbie" - I mean, what with all that Father of the Nation and President-for-Life shit, it would be understandable. It's not that I have a Little David complex that likes to get up the noses of the rich and powerful and corrupt and irredeemably bad; it's just that I feel I know you. I was even a fan during the early part of your incumbency.

You will not remember me, of course, but we have met - sort of. And you scared the living daylights out of me. I believe it was in '93 or '94 or thereabouts, at a news conference organised at the Centrepoint building in Central London. You were in Britain trying to drum up investment for your tail-spinning economy and I was there to cover the event for InterPress Service (IPS).

Muzzled press

The news conference was really a scream. Cast your mind back. Here were assembled the crme de la crme of Britain's media establishment, the self-same ones that had been saying how bad you were, that you were a ruthless dictator and killer who was running the Zimbabwean economy into the ground. And there you were, literally in their sights, ready to be quartered and skewered. And what did they do?

One after another they stood up to ask you interminable questions about what you were doing to foster investor confidence, the size of the previous year's harvests and the intricacies of endogenous growth theory. True, you were there to raise investment, but I felt you were being given too-smooth-a-ride. At least they could have asked more probing questions and the moderator, whose job it was, could have put proceedings back on course if he felt some of the questions were inappropriate.

You must have been thrilled, to see Britain's finest being so nice - just like your muzzled press back home. Who needs a media censor when this intrepid bunch would give him a run for his money! I had had enough of this farce. Do you remember the little guy who stood up towards the end and asked you, "Mr President, you have been accused of being a dictator and locking up political opponents. Is this true - and will this not drive away investment?" Well, I was that little guy.

I remember you raising your eyes to look into mine - and my heart stopped. My whole body broke out in a cold sweat. My heart felt constricted. It was like I could hear the boom-boom-boom of my heart. Your bloodshot eyes, your cold stare had that effect on me. I still don't know what your answer was to that question. I saw your mouth moving, saying something. But I was petrified to even hear, or to make sense of, your words. No doubt, you must have thought, if this guy was in Zimbabwe my boys would have enjoyed playing with him.

You are one tough cookie

We all like to think we are tough. But, like they say, there is always one tougher. And you, Robbie, are one tough cookie. If your stare can immobilise me like that, one can just imagine you in your younger days of guerrilla struggle. I uniquely understand why Britain's former foreign secretary, Jack Straw, shook your hand last year - a "gaffe" for which he was heavily criticised. Did he have a choice? He must have felt like a hare caught in the headlamps of a juggernaut.

Well, enough of that. Now you know how, when and where we met. We're like old friends. No, acquaintances.

I remember with fondness that day in 1980 when you became President of an independent Zimbabwe, after years of struggle against Rhodesian white supremacy. You held promise, your new country held promise. Here was a golden opportunity for you to rule in the interests of your long-suffering people, to right all the historical wrongs. But what have you done with it? You've pissed it all in the wind.

Neocolonialist policies fronted by the IMF

At the start you did well. Your policies helped to raise the standards of health and education of the people, jobs were created and all was going swimmingly - until you came head-to-head with the dictates of Western economic orthodoxy as represented by the prescriptive policies of the IMF and World Bank.

You railed against their policy prescriptions, even refused to implement them. I would be the first to defend your stand against them. Like the younger Mugabe, I am a socialist, a PanAfricanist and hate IMF and World Bank. They have done much to underdevelop Africa, but you went about things the wrong way. You took it personal. Your feeling of being under siege increased year-on-year, as did your attempts to weed out those you saw as "fifth columnists", among them erstwhile comrades-in-struggle. You became a dictator.

The more you resisted the neocolonialist policies fronted by the IMF, the more misinformation about you was spewed out by the Western media, and the more you clamped down on real and imagined opponents. It became a vicious circle, your very own prison from which release has become well-nigh impossible. Only your natural death or forcible removal will free you.

Okay, so Britain reneged on the Lancaster House agreement to assist in land redistribution to your poor. What did you expect? The hope you represented was a threat to the whole geopolitical status quo. Were they going to allow you to succeed? You had to be made an example of, so they helped run your economy into the ground - you made matters worse by seizing white land. Then you started raving on television like a madman. You have not helped your case. You are your worst enemy.

Example to South Africa

I know, there is a lot of Western propaganda about about you. The white farmers did not produce food; they farmed the more lucrative tobacco crop, but your expropriation of their land - let's face it, it's their land - enabled the western media to say that it's your policies that have ruined the agricultural economy. And it's not going to stop. Remember that neighbouring South Africa has a similar history as yours. You have to fail, as a reminder to Mbeki and his successors of the fate that awaits them should they decide to follow your (bad) example. Robbie, listen to me, pack up your bags now and go!

One of my colleagues, a magazine editor who is still a fan, believes that the way you are being treated by the "international community" is not unlike that African titan Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah, the first leader of independent Ghana. (By the way, are you following the World Cup? Brilliant, innit? Ghana gave us the Osagyefo. Ghana, fingers crossed, will give us our first World Cup!)

With all due respects, Robbie, you are not fit to lick the soles of Nkrumah's shoes, not to mention wear them! He is a god. You are profanity incarnated. An Nkrumah in your position, ie your position in the late '80s, would have rallied other African nations to the laudable goal of forming a bulwark against the forces of neo-colonialism and imperialism. No, all that concerned you was maintaining power. And see what you've done with it. You have let me down. You have let your long-suffering people down. Just go."

Those are the things I would say to him, but there is no way such a letter would never reach him. I guess I will have to keep figuring a way to reach Robbie - Oops, sorry, I mean His Most Honourable Excellency.

eBeefs|Besides being able to select from a large range of bouquets these days, you also enjoy a wider range of colours to choose from, several of which have been developed over the last 40 years for specific varieties. But when buying flowers to give to someone you should keep in mind that the color you select could have a special meaning. Below are the most common colours you are likely to find.

Red - Means passion and love

No doubt the significance of red roses is most likely the most often recognized in the world. This fiery and passionate colour is present on almost all merchandise at Valentines, whether they are Valentine cards, stuffed hearts or chocolates.

Pink - Tender and silky

Now and then it could be too early in a relationship to offer red roses with their inference of romance and desire, if you are concerned about moving too fast then go with the softer pinks.

Yellow - To help preserve psyche, body and spirit in balance

Sunlight reflected from the large petals of yellow lilies often appears golden and the yellow color was in earliest religions and cultures related to providing a life force and power and representing potency and supremacy of the leaders.

Orange - Usually utilized to make people feel better

Orange flowers are usually found in hospitals, along with yellow ones and lots of verdant leaves, and they are used to brighten up the wards and patients. If you wish to send flowers to somebody who is feeling a little despondent now you know which provide the most appropriate color to choose.

Green - Healing and natural

Greenery combined in with plants will create a great distinction to the white and lighter yellow petals and be visually a very striking colour. As plants have been employed for countless years for the therapeutic properties the green colour is connected often with well-being, the surroundings and herbal remedies.

White - Peace, calmness and purity

White is a very sophisticated and fashionable colour and together with complementary verdant leaves can facilitate correctly present a space and may be a natural colour which can be employed regardless of the decor, additionally it is a in style selection for weddings, with its association with purity as well as at funerals where it signifies harmony and calmness.

Purple - The colour for wealth and accomplishment

When utilized correctly either by itself or together with different colors this can be a attractive colour that is royal and demonstrates success.

Blue - To generate calm and decrease tension

One of the 'calm' colors which cools and soothes, blue is typically associated with reconciliation and openness, which is possibly why the UN chose this colour as their emblem colour. There are a considerable selection of tones of blue to settle on from icy, fresh blues to dark mysterious blues which nearly look black. Although not a standard colour for the ever popular roses the blues commonly are related to being soothing and reassuring.|I am certain that everybody who reads this has seen the two movies, but I wonder how many of you have thought about all types of stereotypes and racism that exist in the two and the way these were treated by the directors. When looking deeper at the two movies and thinking about this issue, I observed that there were at least three types of stereotypes or racism dealt with in both movies:white and black, white and the others and immigrant and immigrant.

In the first type of racism, white and black, we can immediately see that one of the main issues is related to the jobs. White consider that black people steal their jobs, black clergy do not take care of the white people's needs. The second type of racism, white and the others is treated differently in the two movies and it is presented as fear about everything that is different, hate because the government spends too much money with immigrants and the supremacy of the whites.

Regarding the relationships established between immigrants, the tendency would be to believe that, because they share common experience as foreigners, they would get along better. However, in the movie "Crash" this belief is strongly and abruptly demolished. First of all, when two detectives - Graham and Ria - hit the Asian driver, Ria gets very angry and begins talking with irony and in a racist manner to that woman. The same happens with the Asian woman, who actually is the first to attack verbally:

Asian: "She do this! [...] Mexicans no know how to drive. She too fast." Ria: "I'm sorry you no see my lights. [...] maybe you see over steering wheel, you too!"

Nevertheless, even if the beginning of the movie is pessimistic, its ending - with view to these kind of relations - is optimistic. Anthony stole a van and found in it a bunch of "chinamen". As he didn't know what to do with them, he found himself facing two alternatives: to let them be sold as slaves or to free them. He chose the second variant, giving the people watching the film a little bit of hope in a change for the better.

These two movies "American History X" and "Crash" had a great impact on the public from various reasons, but especially because they appeal to the modern viewer: both movies are set in modern times, in the same city, Los Angeles, California, and share common views upon racism.|In the debate for the Delaware senate seat between Republican candidate Christine O'Donnell and Democratic candidate Chris Coons sure stirred up a lot of chatter both about the topic of "separation of church and state" and Ms. O'Donnell's question, "Let me just clarify: You're telling me that the separation of church and state is found in the First Amendment?"

While the audience of law professors and students at Delaware's Widener School of Law gasped and chuckled at Ms. O'Donnell's response and the media in general slammed her on this, the fact is history is actually on her side.

The metaphor of the "separation of church and state" is frequently incorrectly thought to be a phrase out of the Constitution. It has been used extensively since the 1940s as a way of eliminating religion from the public arena.

What does the 1st amendment actually say?

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

The first part is recognized as the "Establishment clause" and the second part is the "Free Exercise clause". Was the 1st amendment put into place to regulate the religious affairs of the states and localities? The answer is a resounding NO.

From the writing of the Bill of Rights, the 1st amendment was understood to have no bearing on state or local policies. Even Chief Justice John Marshall, who was often not a friend to the Constitution, wrote in 1833 in the case of Barron v. Baltimore, "the Bill of Rights was adopted entirely in response to the idea that the federal government might be a threat to traditional individual rights and to states governments' traditional powers". They were clearly written because of the founder's fear of federal overreaching. The religion clauses were always understood to reserve those rights to the states.

The First Amendment was to ensure that the Congress could not establish a United States religion nor could the Congress interfere with the individual states, many of them like Connecticut and Massachusetts and seven other states has established churches and others had religious requirements from their colonial periods.

From the time that Marshall wrote that, the 1st amendments religion clauses did not form the basis for any Supreme Court decision for a century.

So if the phrase "separation of church and state" is not found in the First Amendment or in the Constitution as a whole, where did it come from?

In 1802, Thomas Jefferson wrote to the Danbury, Connecticut Baptists explaining the wall of separation of church and state was essentially erected to protect them.

To messers. Nehemiah Dodge, Ephraim Robbins, & Stephen S. Nelson, a committee of the Danbury Baptist association in the state of Connecticut.

Gentlemen

The affectionate sentiments of esteem and approbation which you are so good as to express towards me, on behalf of the Danbury Baptist association, give me the highest satisfaction. my duties dictate a faithful and zealous pursuit of the interests of my constituents, & in proportion as they are persuaded of my fidelity to those duties, the discharge of them becomes more and more pleasing.

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between Church & State. Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.

I reciprocate your kind prayers for the protection & blessing of the common father and creator of man, and tender you for yourselves & your religious association, assurances of my high respect & esteem.

Th Jefferson Jan. 1. 1802.

So what changed?

A really despicable man named Justice Hugo Black, a member of the Supreme Court, former Senator from Alabama and Ku Klux Klan member who eventually became Kladd of his Klavern, where he was responsible for administering oaths about white supremacy and "separation of church and state".

His decisions in the 1940 case Cantwell v. Connecticut and the 1947 decision of Everson v. Board of Education of Ewing Township which turned the religion clauses of the First Amendment on its head.

First he claimed that the First Amendment Establishment clause pertained to state and local governments and brought the "wall of separation of church and state" phrase out of the history books and totally bastardized it. He even made false claims about Thomas Jefferson's role (the original author of the wall of separation of church and state phrase) role in the Establishment clause.

Jefferson was not a member of Congress when the First Amendment was drafted nor was he a member of the Virginia Assembly when it was ratified.

Much of the history books also leave out the incredible influence of the Ku Klux Klan during the beginning of the last century. The KKK enjoyed huge political power at that time and had added Catholics to their list of groups to hate. Even the Klansman's Kreed included the statement "I believe in the eternal Separation of Church and State", something Justice Black certainly subscribed to.

Does school prayer establish a National religion? Does "in God we Trust" establish a National religion? The answers to these questions are of course not. But for the past 70 years or so, the use of the metaphor "the wall of separation of church and state", which is not constitutional in any way, has been used by the Supreme Court and those against the Christian religion to push religion completely out of the public discourse.

The fact that the audience at the Widener College of Law laughed at Ms. O'Donnell's question like she was a total buffoon (I do admit I am no fan and find her to be a "Palinite" neocon) and Mr. Coon, a Ivy League educated lawyer saying the statements he said, certainly makes me wonder what is really being taught in law schools in America.

Ms. O'Donnell is this case, in my opinion what absolutely correct.|The internet can be a valuable resource for children. They can use it to do research for school, to play interactive games, and to communicate with their friends and teachers. With one mouse click a window of information is at their disposal. Just how safe is the internet for kids? There is a down side to this multitude of online information. One could identify it as internet dangers. The web is a wide open forum for free expression. There is online content that children have access to most any parent would agree is inappropriate. Pornography and violent content are just to name a few of the hazards children can be exposed to online.

Any child with unrestricted Internet access can view adult pornographic images. Either intentionally or unintentionally, any computer literate child can view free teaser images posted by Internet "pornopreneurs". These are pictures posted on websites designed to solicit new subscribers. They could easily stumble across sites containing images from Playboy as well as porn prosecutable as obscenity. There are various ways that this can happen unintentionally. Through misdirected searches, a child can key in his or her favorite search terms and porn sites pop up along with the sites that were searched for. Innocent word searches such as "boy" or "toys" on popular search engines can lead a child to numerous inappropriate sites. Your child can type in legos, with one missed keystroke "leg" is entered and is directed to sites focused on legs- some of which contain porn. According to a recent study in England, 26 popular children's' characters such as My Little Pony and Action Men revealed thousands of links to porn sites (Envision 2000).

There are many forms of violent and hateful content all over the internet. Hate promoters use the internet to look for vulnerable youth to attract to their community. There are sites which contribute to an online culture where cruelty to others is considered acceptable. Some impressionable kids move from sites where kids are mocked for their personal appearance to sites where minorities are attacked. The hate promoters may use misleading tactics by offering harmless activities, crafts, or links to other respected kids sites. For example, martinlutherking.org is a site which would appear to be a tribute to the civil rights leader but in fact is a hate site derived from a white supremacy organization.

Parents do their best to protect their children - that should include protecting them from internet dangers. There are some effective ways of protecting children from inappropriate content on the internet. Keep the lines of communication open with your kids - ask them to show you where they go online and what they like. Establish clear guidelines of what they can do on the internet. It's a good practice to keep connected computers in a highly visible area especially for kids under 10. Investigate online protection tools such as filtering software.|Ignorance among African American was by far the greatest force of slavery, followed by the shackles. In the early 1600s, deceitfulness played an important role for us being captured and brought over to America as slaves. Surely some blacks were told they would be indentured servants, others were promise the 40 acres and a mule, and others were captured, blessings be upon their souls. By far we were still ignorant of those troubles which lead us to our contemporary entrapment.

Many of the blacks were stripped of their possessions, and all of us were ultimately stripped of our knowledge. No books, no family, and no unity, lead us to ultimate ignorance which really enslaved us. Without knowledge, we became limited by what we saw in the physical and less by faith. Without knowledge our morals of humanity and as a race, no longer shadowed our footsteps, and without knowledge, our single brotherhood slowly diminished into the weight of a mustard seed. Knowledge could have saved us.

Truly in modern day's time the power of knowledge has freed us into boundaries of abundance. This knowledge stems from the Holy Bible and the Noble Koran which ultimately guides us daily to our higher power. This knowledge is higher education we can now elevate to, such as earning Master degrees and growing perpetually. This knowledge is the self proclaimed and acknowledgment that all men are created equal and not just white supremacy. This knowledge is our black history books that informed us of our past for fathers who were powerful Kings and Queens that controlled the masses and had large fortunes.

Knowledge far, is the true essence of African American modern day success. Its what lead of the freedom. Our success in the 21st century lies greatly up on how much knowledge we have and how we use it. Our public success stems into idol figures such as Oprah Winfrey, the biggest influence on TV and also black empowerment by a woman. Knowledge nurtured and developed proclaimed one man, Michael Jordan, as the greatest basketball player ever. Knowledge nurtured and developed into destiny, gave birth to Martin Luther King Jr., for making the biggest civil rights movement ever in America. It is the knowledge of us that will continue to grow our success into realms unknown.

Our modern day success continues to grow. A wise man once told me, In order for us to move forward, we must know where we came from." We came from a land of great descendants of Kings and Queens. So we must advance our knowledge to grow into kings and queens of the past, if not greater; and only then can our success realm into the renaissance of black power.|Lies

By Wells Earl Draughon

ISBN-10: 0595288332

Review by Heather Froeschl

Linda cannot continue with her life as if it were normal. She can't give up like the police seem to have done. Her daughter's room is exactly the way she'd left it, with clothes on the floor and her favorite stuffed animal on the tussled bed. Only her daughter is missing, leaving a terrible emptiness behind.

Linda joins a nationwide underground organization that pulls parents together in battling kidnappers. They are trained in surveillance techniques and interrogations, self-defense and stealth. They go on missions that involve luring people, whom they are told are kidnappers, into houses run by the organization. From there the person is tortured, supposedly to get information about missing children. This leaves the parents trapped in the organization, as they have broken the law; they have hurt people in their efforts to find their children.

While she knows it is wrong, something about the organization doesn't seem right, it doesn't add up and Linda wonders if there might be something else going on. She picks up clues here and there that lead her to further her investigation of the group. What she finds out leads her to understand how much danger she is really in. She continues her own personal search for her daughter and cautiously does her part with the organization. If she doesn't, she may disappear herself.

Wells Earl Draughon has done it again, creating a suspenseful, energetic tale that touches on the deepest fear of parents, while, in this case, also awakens a rage over white supremacy. The plot is well written and results in a page-turner that you will not soon forget. A handful of typos are easy for the reader to overlook but are frustrating to me as they do not need to be there. I trust we will be seeing more from this author in the future and look forward to that day.

"Lies" is a fast paced read that will suck you in and keep you up until the final page. From there you will be left wondering what sinister organizations are really out there and you'll likely check the locks on your doors. I highly recommend this book but I warn parents that it may haunt you.|Lorraine Vivian Hansberry born May 19, 1930 in Chicago, Illinois as the youngest of four children of a prominent real estate broker Carl Augustus Hansberry and Nannie Louise Perry grew up on the south side of Chicago in the Woodlawn neighborhood.in a middle-class family.. The roots of her artistic vision and activism are here in Chicago.

Born into a family of substantial means and parents who were intellectuals and activists, her father, Carl Augustus Hansberry, Sr. from Gloucester, Mississippi, moved to Chicago after attending Alcorn College, and became known as the "kitchenette king" after subdividing large homes vacated by whites moving to the suburbs and selling these small apartments or kitchenettes to African American migrants from the South.

Carl was not only a successful real estate businessman,but an inventor and a politician as well being an active member of the Republican Party who ran for congress in 1940. Hansberry's mother, Nannie Perry, the college educated daughter of an African Methodist Episcopal minister,who became a schoolteacher and, later, ward committeewoman, was from Tennessee. At the time of Lorraine's birth, she had become an influential society matron who hosted major cultural and literary figures

Both parents were activists challenging discriminating Jim Crow Laws. Because of their stature in the black community such important black leaders as Paul Robeson, W.E.B. DuBois, Joe Louis and Langston Hughes frequented their home as Lorraine was growing up.

Lorraine's uncle, Willliam Leo Hansberry, a Howard University professor of African history in D.C. who taught there until 1959 after rejecting employment offers from Atlanta University and the Honorable Marcus Garvey was another important influence on her. As a scholar of African history who taught at Howard University, his students included some of the most decisive figures in African nationalism such as Kwame Nkrumah first president of Ghana and Nnamdi Azikwe, the first Nigerian president. So important was he to Africa especially that a college at the University of Nigeria was named in his honor. While Lorraine was growing up she was frequently exposed to the perspectives of such young African students who were regularly invited home to family dinners.

Although they could afford good private schools, Lorraine was educated in the segregated public schools as her family worked within the system to change the laws governing segregation. At an early age she learned to fight white supremacy. She had grown disgusted of seeing Negroes being spat at, cursed and pummeled with insults and physical acts of violence.

In protest against the segregation laws her parents sent her to public schools rather than private ones. She attended Betsy Ross Elementary School and then in 1944 Englewood High School where she encountered the children of the working class whose independence courage and struggles which would soon become the subject of her first major play she came to admire. Both schools were predominately white. Lorraine even had to fight racism from the day she walked through the doors of Betsy Ross Elementary School. Although she and her siblings enjoyed privileges unknown to their working-class schoolmates, the parents infused their children with racial pride and civic responsibility. They founded the Hansberry Foundation, an organization designed to inform African Americans of their civil rights, and encouraged their children to challenge the exclusionary policies of local restaurants and stores.

When Lorraine was eight, her parents moved the whole family to occupy a house they had bought in a restricted all-white neighborhood in another effort to defy the segregation law then prevalent. Such white neighborhoods excluded African Americans through the then widely used restrictive covenants. . There they faced racial discrimination Their home was vandalized on several occasions.at night by racist mobs. Carl Hansberry, while resisting such attacks on his home and family from neighborhood hoodlums, took his case to court in order to remain there.

As Lorraine Hansberry's parents fought against segregation, armed guards protected her and her siblings. But at one point a slab of concrete almost crushed Lorraine.

In 1940 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled restrictive covenants unconstitutional in a case that came to be known as Hansberry v. Lee, although it did little to affect the actual practice of segregated housing in Chicago. Though victors in the Illinois Supreme Court, Hansberry's family was subjected to a "hellishly hostile white neighborhood."

This experience was what later inspired her writing of her most famous work, A Raisin in the Sun. Carl A. Hansberry later contributed large sums of money to NAACP and the urban league. Unfortunately he died in 1946 before he could complete plans to move his family to Mexico City when Lorraine's two brothers had difficulties accommodating to segregation in the U.S. Army.

Hansberry's interest in Africa began at an early age. In an unfinished, partly autobiographical novel Hansberry wrote: "In her emotions she was sprung from the Southern Zulu and the Central Pygmy, the Eastern Watusi and the treacherous slave-trading Western Ashanti themselves. She was Kikuyu and Masai, ancient cousins of hers had made the exquisite forged sculpture at Benin, while surely even more ancient relatives sat upon the throne at Abu Simbel watching over the Nile..."

She broke the family tradition of enrolling in Southern Negro Colleges and enrolled in the University of Wisconsin at Madison, where she majored in painting. She was soon to discover that her talent lay in writing not art. After two years she decided to leave the University of Wisconsin for New York City, a predominantly white university, to study journalism, but was equally attracted to the visual arts which she also studied at the University of Wisconsin and in Guadalajara Mexico.

She integrated an all-white women's dormitory and became active in the campus chapter of the Young Progressive Association, a national left-wing student organization, serving as its president during her sophomore year and later the Labor Youth League.

Seeing a moving school performance of Sean O'Casey's Juno and the Paycock, inspired her imagination and precipitated both her participation in student theater and her study of the works of modern masters such as Henrik Ibsen and August Strindberg. Juno which is about the problems of a poor urban family in Dublin in 1922 during the early conflict between the Irish Republican Army and the British occupying forces is what is supposed to have inspired her to think of creating a comparable work about an African American family. She thus decided to become a writer and to capture the authentic voice of the African American working class.

Hansberry ended up staying for only two years, at the University of Wisconsin from 1948 to 1950. For she never felt involved in her overall academic life, but outside of class she fell in love with the theater and began forming her radical political beliefs. Living off campus because housing was unavailable in 1948 for black students, Hansberry commuted each day to attend classes in literature, history, philosophy, art, mathematics, and science. Excited by her humanities classes and bored by the sciences, Hansberry balanced A's and F's to maintain the bare minimum average to remain in school. Outside of class, she developed a variety of interests.

In the fall term of her second year, Hansberry became campus chairman of the Young Progressives of America in support of Henry Wallace's 1948 candidacy. Upon his defeat, she grew disaffected with party politics but continued to enjoy her friendships with African students and a number of young campus radicals. Her network of friends in Wisconsin would later become the material for a section of her unfinished autobiographical novel All the Dark and Beautiful Warriors.

But social and racial obstacles stood in the path of her success at the University of Wisconsin. In a theater class on set design in her second year, for example, she received a D from a professor who considered her work above average but who said he did not want to encourage a young black woman to enter a white-dominated field. In 1950, Hansberry left the university headed for New York. After two years she found it to be non-inspiring and moved to New York to pursue her career.

She took classes in writing at the New School for Social Research and at Freedom, a progressive black newspaper founded by Paul Robeson which she described as "the journal to Negro liberation, from 1950 to 1953. As a staff writer for the periodical Freedom over the next three years, Hansberry wrote on Africa, women, New York social issues, and the arts. She traveled widely on assignment for the magazine, covering the U.S., Africa, and South America. While writing on social inequities in New York City, Hansberry developed into an "intellectual revolutionary."

She studied art at Roosevelt University, summer 1950. She wrote articles for the Young Progressives of America magazine. Meanwhile, her writing skills improved. "Shuttling about the city--from the Waldorf-Astoria to Broadway back to Harlem schools--Lorraine Hansberry sharpened her journalistic tools. She learned to interview easily. She started to sift important figures from mazes of paper and began to penetrate the facades of people and events. She soon became associate editor, working closely with Louis Burnham, who in time became her mentor.

In 1952, she replaced Robeson who could not get his passport from the U.S. State Department at a controversial, international peace conference in Montevideo, Uruguay. At the congress she met politically astute feminists from all over the world. Subsequently she spoke at public rallies and meetings, often criticising U.S. policy.

Hansberry's association with Freedom placed her in the midst of Harlem's rich cultural, artistic, and political life. She studied African Culture and History with W.E.B. DuBois at the Jefferson School for Social Sciences in New York. She read avidly and widely in African American history and culture, politics, philosophy, and the arts. She was especially influenced by the works of W. E. B. Du Bois, Frederick Douglass, William Shakespeare, and Langston Hughes.

During that time she took part in liberal causes. She met among others the famous writer Langston Hughes. When she was completing a seminar on African history under W.E.B. Du Bois (1868-1963), she wrote a research paper on 'The Belgian Congo: A Preliminary Report on Its Land, Its History and Its People.'

While a journalist for Freedom, Hansberry also developed public speaking skills by teaching classes at Frederick Douglass School in Harlem and by attending and speaking at political rallies.

While participating in a demonstration protesting the exclusion of black players from the basketball team at New York University in 1951, she met Robert Barron Nemiroff, a Jewish literature student, songwriter, writer and activist, son of progressive Russian Jewish immigrants. Having earned his master's degree four months earlier at New York University, he had begun writing a book on Theodore Dreiser, which had been the topic for his thesis.

The young couple moved to Greenwich Village where Hansberry became intimately involved with a number of the liberal causes of the period. She began to write extensively about the people and lifestyles that she observed around her. She was already an experienced writer and editor, having published articles, essays, and poetry in Freedom, New Challenge, and other leftist magazines.

Hansberry worked for a while in the Greenwich Village restaurant owned by Nemiroff's family. The two developed a close emotional and intellectual relationship, and on June 20, 1953, they were married.. The night before their wedding they joined a protest against the execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg for espionage.

After leaving Freedom in 1953 to concentrate on her writing, Hansberry worked at various odd jobs including tagger in the garment industry, typist, waitress, cashier, program director at Camp Unity (an interracial summer camp),, secretary, recreation leader for the physically disabled, and teacher at the Marxist-oriented Jefferson School for Social Science and occasional contributor for Freedom before it went bankrupt in 1955 during the following few years. After a series of part-time jobs, Hansberry settled down to the writing of a play. When her husband co-wrote "Cindy Oh Cindy" (1956), a ballad that became an instant hit, Nemiroff gained success. He and a friend, Burt D'Lugoff, wrote it together and Hansberry suggested the title, The song earned them $100,000 in 1956. This income freed both Hansberry and Nemiroff to write full time.

Nemiroff wrote a play, Postmark Zero, performed on Broadway in 1965, while Hansberry wrote a number of works, including A Raisin in the Sun, The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window, which was produced in 1964, and several more in between Hansberry now devoted herself entirely to writing. So in that same 1956 she quit working at her part time jobs and devoted all her time to her writing. Her full energies were now turned to a play about a struggling, working-class black family, like the families who rented her father's properties on Chicago's South Side-A Raisin in the Sun.

Nemiroff, meanwhile, having graduated with his master's degree from NYU became first a reader and copywriter for Sears Readers' Club and later promotions director of Avon Books. Together they absorbed the rich cultural milieu of Greenwich Village, remained active on picket lines and at all-night vigils for desegregation, and enjoyed the company of friends. Hansberry would later write about these times in her play The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window.

A t that time she wrote A Raisin in the Sun which was finished in 1957 and on March 11, opened at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre in New York City with a run of 530 performances. The play was a huge success.

It was the first play written by an African-American woman and produced on Broadway. It won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award making Hansberry the youngest and first African American to receive the Award. .

Hansberry was named "most promising playwright" of the season by Variety's poll of New York drama critics. She finished the film version of A Raisin in the Sun in 1961 starring Sidney Pointier, Claudia McNeil and Ruby Dee. In 1961 the film version opened. Hansberry won a special award at the Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for a Screen Writer's Guild Award for her screenplay. A second television adaptation of the play was aired in 1989 starring Danny Glover, Esther Rolle, and Kim Yancey. Hansberry in this play portrayed individuals - not only black - who defend their own and other's dignity. In writing A Raisin in the Sun Lorraine instilled her values of equality ... Hans berry's purpose was to show "the many gradations in even one Negro family." The characters suffer, hope, dream, and triumph over the enormous barriers erected by the dominant culture.

Celebrated drama critic Brook Atkinson wrote: "She has told the inner as well as the outer truths about a Negro family in Chicago. The play has vigor as well as veracity and is likely to destroy the complacency of anyone who sees it." The production catapulted Hansberry into the forefront of the theatre world.

"All art is ultimately social: that which agitates and that which prepares the mind for slumber," she once said."... in order for a person to bear his life, he needs a valid re-creation of that life, which is why, as Ray Charles might put it, blacks chose to sing the blues. This is why Raisin in the Sun meant so much to black people - on the stage: the film is another matter. In the theater, a current flowed back and forth between the audience and the actors, flesh and blood corroborating flesh and blood - as we say, testifying... The root argument of the play is really far more subtle than either its detractors or the bulk of its admirers were able to see." (James Baldwin in The Devil Finds Work, 1976)

The working title of A Raisin in the Sun was originally 'The Crystal Stair' after a line in a poem by Langston Hughes. The new title was from another Langston Hughes poem, which asked: "What happens to a dream deferred? / Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun, / Or does it explode?" The play was later renamed A Raisin in the Sun taking its title from a line in Langston Hughes' poem What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up Like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore- And then run? Does it stink like rotten meat? / Or crust and sugar over- Like a syrupy sweet? Maybe it just sags Like a heavy load. Or does it explode|After watching Malcolm X my perspective of the man was changed. What I thought of him and what the media portrayed him as is so different from the man he became before he died. Many of us, when we think of Malcolm X think of a man who supported black supremacy and stirred hatred of the white man. The media however has failed to tell the end of his story, the part of his story where his prejudice was replaced with an embrace of brotherhood for all mankind. So I think it is important to know his whole story - the beginning, middle and end - to learn from the source of his mistakes as well as the mistakes of the society he fought so hard to change. To illustrate his journey I will attempt to walk you through the events of his life and offer a perspective that may change the way you perceive Malcolm X.

"We are each burdened with prejudice; against the poor or the rich, the smart or the slow, the gaunt or the obese. It is natural to develop prejudices. It is noble to rise above them." (Author Unknown)

On May 10, 1925 in Omaha Nebraska a child is born. No one could know the gravity this child would impact upon society. Number seven out of eight children born as Malcolm Little to mother Louise Little and self-reliant father Earl Little; Malcolm would grow up to become Malcolm X, leader of the 1960s black power movement. Early in his life Malcolm learns racism and prejudice from his environment as his childhood is marked by the violent death of his father by the hands of the Ku Klux Klan. The result is a disintegrated family; and Malcolm lands in a juvenile home. Malcolm then grows up to live out the prevailing society-force-fed prejudicious stereotype of the white man, becoming a street hustler in Harlem who covets the opportunities of the racist white man. Still at this stage of his life no one knows the gravity of his existence, at least not until he converts to the Nation of Islam where he finds an "enlightened" structure for him to focus his disdain of the source of prejudice pervading his life; the white man. However, we learn in the documentary film, Malcolm X, that it is not his focused disdain, or racism he embraced as a member of the Nation of Islam that we should remember him for; but rather his eventual personal triumph over racism, a fact that many of us are ignorant of.

His father, a reverend, attracted persecution from the KKK (Ku Klux Klan) early in Malcolm's childhood because of his firm teachings of self-reliance to his congregation. Several attempts to scare Malcolm's father were made, but to no avail. Eventually his father's defiance led to his brutal and violent death at the hands of the KKK. I would suppose that an event as horrific as this would scar Malcolm as a child and permanently imprint upon his mind the futility of standing against racism.

The resulting effect of his father's death places Malcolm in a juvenile home. During this time Malcolm excels in grade school, becoming the top of his class. It seems he wishes to defy the futile message of his father's murderer's. Malcolm tells his teacher that his goal is to become a lawyer. But here, in a place where education should be above prejudice, Malcolm is told he cannot aspire to the lofty ambitions of being a lawyer; that he should be a carpenter because being a lawyer is not a realistic goal for a "nigger". Perhaps this is a marked point for change in Malcolm's goals and ambitions.

An older Malcolm acquires various jobs shoe shining, dishwashing, and soda jerking. Soon after he is exposed to the criminal world and finds himself on the streets of Harlem living the tireless life of a hustler. Always moving, always preying on victims, Malcolm dangerously lives on the edge of becoming a statistic. Drugs, larceny and carousing with women is all done at the expense of the white man. The white woman in fact is a conquest to him, another indication of his ironic coveting and resentment of the white man. Crippled by his childhood trauma Malcolm is still yet unable to filter information in a productive way. Everything he does is a stubborn cry out to the world, to the white man, to himself.

His crimes eventually lead him to jail. This is where the culmination of his experiences mark his turn to becoming a black power leader. This is where he becomes the person that history portrays him. But this person is just another version of the same Malcolm in Harlem. His resentment for the white man is the same. All that changes is the way he expresses it.

The Nation of Islam invites Malcolm in with spiritual enlightenments and structure. Their teachings of separation or segregation are very attractive to Malcolm. The trauma from Malcolm's past is perhaps the fuel for his unquestionable devotion to this ideology. As humans we need structure to base our reality and give shape to it and give us direction. The Nation of Islam seems to be the perfect ideological structure to shape Malcolm's broken psyche. They preach a little bit of truth, but he is unaware of the cancerous manipulative nature of his childhood trauma - using his resentment towards the white man. Sure he stopped carousing with women, stopped doing drugs and living the life of a criminal. But that little bit of truth just made it easier for Malcolm to retain his resentment and devote himself to their teachings, especially the teachings of separation that he fervently proclaimed. It appears that Malcolm is confusing this teaching with what he truly needed to confront, his own prejudice.

How many of us confuse truth because of repressed trauma? Why do things seem so attractive to us and stir such emotional devotion despite their obvious negative nature? The false therapy of shouting these so-called truths that have manipulated us are just a cry to heal our broken hearts or souls. Malcolm is unaware of this manipulation until his own people; The Nation of Islam, the focus of his existence and devotion ostracize him. Then he realizes the error of his thinking.

In March 1964, Malcolm X leaves the Nation of Islam and makes is hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca. Here he sheds his controversial name for a new name, El Hajj Malik El Shabazz. From this point should be the Malcolm we remember, not the broken and manipulated Malcolm that is presented by the media that feeds the common perception in society. His hajj is where he changes his perspective on whites and racism completely. Here is an excerpt of a letter El Hajj Malik El Shabazz wrote about his Hajj experience. Readers of this letter can learn as Malcolm X did, that we are all burdened with prejudice, and that it is noble to build bridges of cooperation instead of walls of segregation.

"During the past eleven days here in the Muslim world, I have eaten from the same plate, drunk from the same glass and slept in the same bed (or on the same rug)-while praying to the same God with fellow Muslims, whose eyes were the bluest of the blue, whose hair was the blondest of blond, and whose skin was the whitest of white. And in the words and in the actions and in the deeds of the 'white' Muslims, I felt the same sincerity that I felt among the black African Muslims of Nigeria, Sudan and Ghana. We are truly all the same-brothers. All praise is due to Allah, the Lord of the worlds." (El Hajj Malik El Shabazz-1964)|Several years ago, I surveyed thousands of martial artists about whether they wore their martial-arts uniforms in public or t-shirts with the school logo. I wanted to know if people kept the knowledge of their skills a secret or if they "wore their prowess on their sleeves."

A large percentage of practitioners said that they wouldn't wear their school shirt (with martial-arts logo) or a decorative martial-arts t-shirt, because it "would" let everyone know that they possess martial skills.

They wanted to keep this knowledge on the hush hush. This makes sense, right?

They don't want the public to know that they study martial arts....

Which is why they have a large tattoo on their arm telling the whole world of their style!

But let's move beyond the irony....

Tattoo recognizing is useful beyond finding people who are the haters in our society (symbols or white supremacy, neo-naziism, and so on).

Branding Yourself to Your Style Forever Of course, you could fool those around you by wearing a tattoo of a different style....

Recently, I was at the Oregon Country Fair. It was the first time for my wife and daughter. There, the tattoos abounded... in all sorts of "interesting" places on the "bod."

One guy had a nice tattoo of a fist in front of a yin-yang symbol. I had the chance to ask him if he was into Tae Kwon Do. "Naw," he replied. "I used to do TKD. Then for a while I did some Aikido. But I haven't practiced any of that stuff in years."

And that started me thinking about tattoos and martial arts... again.

Poor guy.

My wife has often asked her high-school students, "Would you want to have the same piece of artwork on the wall for your whole life?"

I guess this is an instance of a time where the guy at the fair would have answered, "Uh, no... uh... I guess."

Note: I know that a tattoo can become part of your personality. It is now how you are described and recognized by others. "You know; she's the one with the Ren and Stimpy tattoo on her ankle." (Who knew that Ren and Stimpy would ever be passe'?)

When you see certain tattoos, or tattoos in general, on another person, what kind of response does it invoke in you? Do you feel any particular emotions? (Fear, admiration, disgust?)

From now on, think of body art and jewelry as providing potential clues -- knowledge that you could use to stay safe. Remember, these are potential indicators only... think of the guy at the fair.|As a kid and well into my college years, going to YMCA Camp Letts near the Chesapeake Bay was one of my central life experiences. One of those experiences was confronting Dixie style segregation.

YMCA Camp Letts sits at the end of a peninsula jutting out into the Rhode River near Edgewater, Maryland. On a clear day, you can see all the way to where the South River meets the Chesapeake Bay. The camp was established in 1906 and has been in its present location since 1922. Many of the counselors came from local Maryland colleges, especially the University of Maryland at College Park.

Generations of DC area kids have sailed its waters, hiked its trails, played Capture the Flag, sat around campfires, short-sheeted one another and told dirty jokes after lights out. It has also served as an adult conference center and outdoor education center for school kids.

I first attended Camp Letts in 1957 at the age of 9. Then it was racially segregated, not uncommon in the Maryland of that time. The Chesapeake Bay beaches near Camp Letts where my parents took me for weekend outings were White Only as were many public accommodations and restaurants. But the Civil Rights Movement was on the march and the walls of Jim Crow were falling.

I had grown up in segregated Glenmont, Maryland and had been surrounded by the everyday bigotry of a border state white working class community. But I had also been raised Unitarian by liberal parents. They were not paragons of racial equality, but they made no effort to indoctrinate me with concentrated white supremacy.

My North Carolina born mom directed most of her prejudices toward "hillbillies" and people who reminded her of Jeeter Lester (a character in Erskine Caldwell's novel 'Tobacco Road' about impoverished southern white tenant farmers). After spending her childhood in Depression-era Durham NC, the last thing she wanted to be reminded of was white poverty.

In short, I had come to believe that racial prejudice was not only impolite, but downright wrong.

In 1961, Camp Letts finally desegregated. I don't know how that decision was made or even why. You would have to delve deep into the archives of the Washington Metropolitan YMCA to answer that question. So in the summer of 1961, I met Butch, the first "Negro" I ever got to know personally.

Now I had a chance to put my beliefs into action with about 20 other teenage boys (ages 13-16).

We were "Pioneers" (which was what the YMCA called our Camp Letts teen group). We lived away from the younger kids in tents instead of cabins, cooked our own food, hauled water and used a trench for nature's needs.

For the first couple of days of his arrival, Butch seemed stiff and distant. But whatever our racial views, we were curious about him and eventually he opened up and it seemed he had become "one of the guys".

Butch was a tall kid, about 16, and more mature than most of us. He was also a natural leader and I know I wasn't the only Pioneer who looked up to him. It looked like integration was working.

We were supposed to be preparing for a 2 week canoe trip across the Chesapeake Bay to Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. To practice our open-water canoeing skills, we were scheduled for an overnight canoe trip down to Annapolis-- a distance of about 25 miles roundtrip.

We packed our tents and gear into our canoes and paddled for hours before we reached the Severn River and the campground we were staying at. The Chesapeake Bay skies were blue, but we had battled a stiff wind and white caps all the way there and we were exhausted when we arrived near dusk.

The next day our counselors took us on a tour of the US Naval Academy and told us we were free to wander the streets of Annapolis in the evening. Several of us made plans to see "Hercules", a "sand and sandal" movie starring muscleman Steve Reeves.

I was in the "Hercules" group along with Butch and about 6 other guys. When we arrived at the theater, the ticket seller told us there was a problem. The theater did not allow "Negroes". Butch no longer had that confident leader-like look on his face. After some hesitation, he suggested that we just go on in and he'd find something else to do.

I'd like to say that we told him,"What the hell are you talking about," and that we all immediately staged a sit-in at the theater. But that's not the way it went down.

We told him "Sure...ok. We'll see you back at the campsite."

The movie was totally forgettable. After we paddled back to the Pioneer Village at Camp Letts, Butch was a changed person. He withdrew from us and started hanging out with Marshall and the other kids of the all Black cooking staff. At that time, the only Black people who worked there were a few cooks and maintenance people.

The cooks lived in small cabins right behind the Dining Hall. I didn't realize it at the time, but when I think about them now, they resembled the traditional slave cabins of Maryland's plantation days.

Then Butch disappeared. The camp staff found him on Route 214 outside the Camp Letts gate trying to hitchhike back to DC. They returned him to the Pioneer Village after some closed door meetings with the Camp Director. A few days later, Butch was back on Route 214 trying to thumb a ride home. The next thing we knew, his bunk was empty and his stuff was gone.

Ken, the head counselor, called a Village meeting around the council fire and announced in a loud voice,"Well...we're minus one nigger".

I would like to say that we all stood up and told Ken that he ought to shut his redneck cracker mouth before we shoved a log in it.

But of course no one did. We just sat in stunned silence. Later some of us talked about how Ken's comment was really wrong, but publicly we went on as if nothing had happened.

We were cowards who betrayed Butch not once, but twice.

But I have to say that Camp Letts did not give up on desegregation. By 1962, there was a small but growing number of Black campers. One of them (whose name I don't recall), was with our teen group during a week-long exploration of Virginia's Shenandoah National Park.

On the drive back, we stopped at an empty roadside diner and waited for service...and waited...and waited. Finally it dawned on our counselor what was going on. He said something to the waitress and told us we were all going to get served or none of us would get served. We walked out with our heads held high.

We were hungry teenage boys, but we managed to keep our self-respect this time. He found us a place up the road that was only interested in the color of our money and we ate those burgers and fries with a special enthusiasm.

I became a Counselor-in-Training (CIT) in 1964. There were now Black counselors and a Black unit leader. A counselor named Chris Stone was teaching us civil rights songs. A CIT named Phil Blum was caught up in the folk music movement and strummed away singing old folk songs and the new protest anthems. He was joined by guitarist Geoff Bartley and vocalist Lee Robbins. Camp Letts now had its own folk and protest group. Phil ended up playing guitar professionally for many years. Geoff is still a popular folksinger in the Boston area.

Camp Letts was no longer a culture of segregation and white isolation. Kids were singing freedom songs around the campfires along with the traditional camp favorites like "Sound Off!" and "The Ship Titanic". At night during Vespers some of us told stories about the brave civil rights workers who were facing down the cops and the Klan.

My last year at Camp Letts was in 1968 when I was a unit leader. My junior counselor that year was a Black high school student named Ted whose parents had been leaders in the Civil Rights Movement. Ted had even met Dr. King. I was impressed. I'd say about 25%-30% of the campers were Black. There were a number of Black counselors including two in my unit.

One night a bunch of us were sitting around talking about the various demonstrations we had been involved in. It was 1968 after all and the University of Maryland was not the only school represented on the Camp Letts staff.

People told stories of sit-ins, marches, arrests, teargas and police clubs. Even John the ROTC cadet had taken part in an anti-war demonstration. Then Eugene spoke up. He was a student at historically Black North Carolina A&T in Greensboro, NC. He told us that when Martin Luther King was assassinated in April, that the cops had come into the campus shooting. It was lucky no one was killed. He said this with a quiet matter-of-factness that was chilling.

If you were a white student in 1968, you might get smacked upside the head. If you were a Black student in 1968, you could easily end up dead. The times were changing, but they were still changing differently depending on what color you were.

When I entered the University of Maryland in 1965, YMCA Camp Letts had already introduced me to the racial changes that were sweeping across America...and I wasn't the only Terp who had spent summers there.

UM was only barely desegregated in 1965. But there was already a small SDS chapter and a fair housing group. Campus CORE and the Black Student Union were soon to be born.

I wanted to join the fight and I knew that the campfires of Camp Letts had helped light the way.|Money. Rural Mississippi, 1954. A whistle. Then a murder. This, however, was not a murder over money, but rather in Money, a tiny one-shop town, whose primary inhabitants were sharecroppers, a throwback to antebellum times. That general store was owned by the Bryant family, whose owners included twenty-one year old Carolyn Bryant, a former beauty queen whose good looks were well-known around those parts.

It was that fateful day, when a fourteen year old boy from Chicago named Emmett Till came down to spend a few weeks visiting with relatives. He stayed along with several of his cousins at his great-uncle Mose "Preacher" Wright's home, in a nearby section of town exclusively populated by blacks. Unbeknownst to young Emmett, there was an unwritten "code" in rural Mississippi: it was well known in the Jim Crow South that there were certain things a black male - be it a young child, or an adult man - just did not do. The list was long, and extensive. His mother, Mamie Till Bradley, warned him before he boarded the train from Illinois that such "black codes" still existed. In fact, she feared a great deal for her son's safety, and was reticent to even allow him to Mississippi.

Nonetheless, the young Till was insistent, and as was unsurprising to those who knew him, he exuded a confidence in adolescence that made him fearless. However, street smarts in Chicago would only get a young black man so far in rural Money. Though 700 miles apart geographically, the two locales were more like a million miles apart sociologically, racially, and culturally.

There were unspoken rules Emmett would need to acquaint himself with that were prevalent throughout the South at this time, and most black men were acquiescent, if not downright submissive to the white race's presupposed dominance. Some of the rules included: not making eye contact with a white woman; deference in speaking, with simple phrases of "Yes, ma'am," and "no, ma'am;" and interracial dating or intermarriage was more than faux pas; it was absolutely forbidden, and considered to be miscegenation. Southern politicians at the time railed against the dangers of the impending "mongrelization" of the races were intermarriage to occur.

Young Till violated all of the societal norms, at least in the eyes of Bryant and Milam, the half-brothers who perpetrated the unspeakable horrors after an innocent "wolf-whistle" that Till purportedly made at Bryant's wife when leaving the store that fateful day in Money. Little did any of them know, but this would be the catalyzing event that would spark the nascent Civil Rights movement in the United States, dramatically altering race relations and the fabric of our very nation for decades to come.

Accounts vary as to what exactly Emmett Till said or did that day at Milam's store, as he went in alone to buy some candy. By some witness's statements, he put his arm around her waist and asked for a date. Others say he wolf-whistled at her as they left. Yet others, still, say he simply touched her hand when making change, which in itself was considered an egregious violation of the sanctity and purity of the Southern white woman, whose frailty prevented her from defending herself. In the Jim Crow South, he should have put his change down on the counter so as to avoid any potential for impropriety.

Irrespective of how the events transpired inside the store, the response was swift: Bryant ran out to her car to fetch her revolver, and Till and his friends quickly leapt into their automobile and fled. Little did they realize that they were about to unleash a hurricane, one which would spur a movement on a scale never before seen in American history.

One must first understand not only the juxtaposition between Till's upbringing in Chicago vis--vis life in the Jim Crow South, but also understand the overarching framework of Southern power philosophy and black repression. By the time the Reconstruction period ended, a reconstruction of race relations in the South saw the genesis of the Southern white mythology of "the black rapist." Fed by fears of miscegenation propagated by politicians, writers, and newspaper editorial boards, the myth was perpetuated that "marriage or sexual intimacy with blacks would degrade and eventually extinguish Anglo-Saxon civilization itself."

By the time the Brown v. Board of Ed. decision was handed down in 1954, the preservation of Southern "white patriarchy seemed to require the suppression of even the most insignificant challenges to its authority;" thus the mythologizing of black men as savages, rapists, and lustful for white women. With a strong sense of "honor" identity in white Southern society, appealing to the basest instincts of a father, brother, or husband so as to defend the honor of his daughters, sisters or wife proved to be very effective. The lawlessness that prevailed would ultimately result in thousands of lynchings across the South. Few would resonate as much as that of Emmett Till.

Following the incident at the Bryant shop, Till and his cousins decided not to tell Mose Wright about what happened. Carolyn Bryant decided, similarly, to hide the story from her husband, but one of Till's companions that day leaked the information to him. Enraged, Bryant "enlisted the aid of his half-brother, G.W. Milam, and went in the middle of the night to Mose Wright's home, where Till was staying, and abducted him. Though details after that are murky, Till never returned. After a perfunctory and nonchalant search effort by local authorities, only days later did some teen boys fishing stumble upon his bloated and mutilated corpse in the Tallahatchie River, weighted down by a 100-lbs. gin mill fan fastened around his neck with heavy barbed wire.

More notable than the response of local law enforcement and the community of Money - who were, unsurprisingly, unconcerned - was that of Mamie Till Bradley, young Emmett's mother. By 1948, there were more than one million homes with television sets in the United States. Bradley, whose grief was most unbearable at the loss of her only child, decided to leverage mass media communications to convey images of this grave injustice around the world. "Tills mother, Mamie Bradley, made plans for a public four-day funeral that would make national headlines and transform the lynching of Emmett till into a national scandal." Some estimates range from 10,000 - 50,000 people attended his services over those four days. Bradley's insistence on an open casket service was meant to display the grotesquely battered state of her son, and she allowed the black press to take photographs of him as he lay dressed in a tuxedo. These images would resonate in media outlets around the entire world.

Jet magazine played an integral role in transmitting the grave and barbaric imagery of Till's corpse, especially in light of its presence as the preeminent Afro-American-centric publication of the time. Reaching a nationwide audience, the graphic image of Till's disfigured face in his open casket horrified - and galvanized - the black community nationwide. Juxtaposed with the bright, smiling image of Till a few months before his death, the images "of a child grieved over by a good and respectable middle-class mother made for particularly effective photographs, not only as anti-lynching images, but as catalysts for a whole generation of black people who felt propelled into an active fight for civil rights."

In response to the New York Amsterdam News' decision to place Till's funeral picture top of fold, front page, one community member wrote to the editors, "Congratulations to your paper for putting the picture of the Till boy on the front page so the whole world can see what goes on inside Mississippi." Other responses from around the nation - and the world - were similarly supportive.

In addition to her decision to have an open casket at Till's funeral, Bradley even went so far as to send telegrams to President Eisenhower, urging him to take action on civil rights; he never responded. Similarly, black organizations utilized the black press as another means to heighten the awareness of the Till lynching to the upper echelons of the U.S. government, but still to no avail. Camille Carter of the NAACP appealed to Eisenhower directly via the Pittsburgh Courier, referring to Till's death as "one of the most barbaric crimes ever perpetrated by racists and bigots... to perpetuate white supremacy."

Till's lynching was the first great media event of the civil rights movement and produced the largest amount of visual documentation ever. Many regarded it as the opening shot of the civil rights movement, a collective political mobilization that demanded full citizen rights for all blacks. It was only three months later that Rosa Parks refused to relinquish her seat on the bus.

T. R. M. Howard of the Regional Council of Negro Leadership, had spoken on the brutal slaying of Emmett Till as King's guest at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church only four days before Parks' arrest. Parks was in the audience and later said that Emmett Till was on her mind when she refused to give up her seat.

It was not simply the media's portrayal of Till's victimized body that helped to catalyze the Civil Rights Movement; the media also played a prominent role in the court trial that took place once Bryant and Milam were apprehended for his murder. Newspapers all over the nation, and world, gave front page coverage to the proceedings once they began in Sumner, Mississippi. In addition to a press corps of nearly 70 newspapermen, "the three major television networks flew planes daily to a field in Tutwiler (seven miles away) to pick up film for editing and showing in New York." What ensued hereafter would merely be a prelude to what many in the black community around the country knew would be a farcical, perversion of justice. One local, befuddled by all of the attention their tiny hamlet had garnered, remarked to a newspaperman, "[nodding] in the direction of the Tallahatchie [and pointed out]: 'That river's full of niggers.'" Local press in the predominantly white controlled regions of the South echoed the sentiments of the locals. Some were even openly hostile to all of the tumult surrounding the court proceedings. "The Yazoo City Herald [wrote] 'Through the furor over the Emmett Till case[,] we hope someone gets this over to the nine ninnies who comprise the present United States Supreme Court. Some of the young negro's blood is on their hands, also."

Other newspapers and Southern politicians accused the whole Emmett Till case as a communist plot; or else, a scheme devised by the NAACP to rabble rouse and stir up resentment in order to drive a wedge between the white and black communities of the South. In their eyes, the status quo must be preserved. Immediately from the outset of the court hearings, the defense team of Milam and Bryant would seek to instill doubt in the jurists' minds that it was not even Till's body that was pulled from the Tallahatchie River, further perpetuating the myth that this was another young man's body, planted by the NAACP. Their campaign of misdirection and sowing the seeds of doubt obviously worked; it took a mere sixty-three minutes for the jury to acquit the two men on all charges. In an interview in the late 1990s, Ray Tribble, the youngest of the jury pool in his 20s, commented to journalist Richard Rubin, "'That body,' he told me, his voice assuming a didactic tone, 'had hair on its chest. And everybody knows,' he continued, that 'blacks don't grow hair on their chest until they get to be about 30.'

Other doubts were cast that the body was so badly decomposed, no one would be able to identify, though Till's mother did. Another recognizable feature was the gold ring found on his finger, engraved with the initials, "LT," for his father, who had left the ring to Emmett upon his death. Nevertheless, the seeds of doubt were incessantly fertilized throughout the trial. Even Tallahatchie County sheriff Strider testified - strikingly - for the defense, and claimed in his testimony, "that the notorious NAACP had plotted Till's so-called killing, and that Till himself was happily living in Detroit."

In his closing arguments, attorney for the defense John Whitten "told the jurors he was sure "every last Anglo-Saxon one of you has the courage to free these men in the face of that pressure." That comment is strikingly similar to that made, in the early 1900s, by several prominent politicians who warned of the degradation of "Anglo-Saxon civilization." Later, in a 1995 interview with Richard Rubin, defense attorney Whitten somewhat apologetically admitted, "I guess you could say I was playing the race card."

The national press responded with shock and indignance at the acquittal of Bryant and Milam. The Crisis reported, "Not since Pearl Harbor has the country been so outraged as by the brutal, insensate lynching... and the unconscionable verdict of the Sumner, Mississippi jury." Jet advertised a large community meeting featuring Emmett Till's cousin, who was one of the witnesses during the trial:

'More than 10,000 persons jammed an NAACP mass meeting at Chicago's Metropolitan Community Church where lanky Willie Reed, 18-year-old cotton picker who became the trial's star witness, urged northern Negroes to quit shouting and begin working to help their people in the South.' This is also a demonstration of the trial becoming a call to action by members of the black press to the black community at large.

Thus we are beginning to see how watershed a moment the lynching of a child for a crime as simple as whistling at a white woman -- and the subsequent acquittal of the perpetrators by an all-male, all-white jury - would galvanize blacks all around the nation. To say that this was not the spark that lit the smoldering powder keg of pent up, black repression, would be to deny history. Emmett Till's martyrdom incited the likes of Rosa Parks, Septima Clark, and Dr. Martin Luther King. His martyrdom fomented a people to start a movement that would inexorably alter the course of human justice, the natural rights of man, and equality for not just people of different races, but of different genders, income levels, and religions.

As Mamie Till Bradley so succinctly put it, "The death of my son can mean something to the other unfortunate people all over the world. Then for him to have died a hero would mean more to me than for him just to have died."|Shall we then turn away the Reminder from you altogether because you are a prodigal people?" (Holy Qur'an 43:5)

The Hon. Minister Louis Farrakhan since 1984, in particular, has been one of the most vilified-hated-misrepresented men in history. The media and much of white America have already concretized their views of this man and his message. Also, black people who follow the lead of the dominate society repeat the same. Is this man a racist hater or is he a divine man of God walking in the footsteps of the prophets (yet he doesn't claim to be any prophet)?

We, the members of The Nation of Islam, have a different view of this man and his message than most. We believe that he is a divinely inspired teacher. We believe further that he is fulfilling prophecy as a Warner to America and her government in this dark time. Lastly, we believe he is the national representative of The Messenger of ALLAH, The Most Hon. Elijah Muhammad

What is the great benefit of Louis Farrakhan and why should anyone consider his leadership?

At this time I would like to speak as one who has accepted and benefited from his divine ministry. One of the titles that we refer to Minister Farrakhan is "The reminder" or "A divine reminder".

According to the Encarta World English Dictionary a reminder is:

"Something that reminds: somebody or something that reminds a person or people of somebody or something else."

The prefix "re" means:

"Again, anew -rebuild"

Lastly mind is defined as

"Seat of thought and memory: the center of consciousness that generates thoughts, feelings, ideas, and perceptions, and stores knowledge and memories"

And

"Way of thinking: an opinion or personal way of thinking about something"

With the above understanding of words we can view Minister Farrakhan and the purpose of his ministry better.

When you come to Farrakhan and open your ear and your heart to the message that he gives; you will find a message that will renew our state of conscious and give us the ability to connect to the divine within. I have heard him say it from his own mouth that "His only job is to connect you to God so that you can grow in God and God begins to lead you."

This world has been greatly influenced by satanic forces. In particular as black people our very soul has been poisoned by the philosophy of white supremacy in religion, education, economic and politics. This condition necessitates us needing one to repair the damage done to us by over 400 years of physical slavery and outright mis-education which produces "mental slavery.

Therefore, The Bible teaches us in Romans 12:2, "Do not conform yourselves to this age but be transformed by the renewal of your mind."

We must free our minds as out great thinker and historian Carter G. Woodson taught us 75 years ago when he said,

"When you control a man's thinking you do not have to worry about his actions. You do not have to tell him not to stand here or go yonder. He will find his 'proper place' and will stay in it. You do not need to send him to the back door. He will go without being told. In fact, if there is no back door, he will cut one for his special benefit. His education makes it necessary."

So, The Honorable Louis Farrakhan is more than just some little "black radical" trying to cause trouble. He is a man with a teaching, taught by his spiritual father, which will awaken the mind of we who are mentally sleeping and show our true identity as being more than "African Americans".

When I begin to first listen to Minister Farrakhan, I didn't know the depth of my mental death until he told me so. I have been influenced by Minister Farrakhan, who was taught by the wisest Blackman in history-The Hon. Elijah Muhammad, for 15 years

He "reminded" me of my great heritage as a part of the black race. He "reminded me" that I am supposed to be in the image and likeness of the Creator. He taught me that my ancestors were the original makers of civilization and the seed of their genius lives in me.

Thank you for reading these few words|The state of New Hampshire was originally a colony which was founded on a land grant given to Captain John Mason and Sir Ferdinando Gorges by the Council for New England in 1622. Its first settlement was at Odiorne's Point near Portsmouth and was called Pannaway Plantation. The first settlers were a group of English fishermen under David Thompson in 1623 who built a fort, a manor house and some other buildings mainly for fish processing.

Settlers of Pannaway later moved to the Portsmouth region and named their new settlement Strawberry Banke. Cocheco at Dover Neck was the other plantation set up at the time. Religious leaders founded the seacoast plantations of Hampton and Exeter in 1638. In 1631 Captain Thomas Wiggin was appointed the governor of the Upper Plantation which comprised of present-day Dover, Durham and Stratham.

Most of the settlers turned to fish and timber as a source of livelihood. After the death of John Mason, New Hampshire's four plantations were forced to accept Massachusetts' rule for a period of 40 years. Meanwhile the ownership title bounced from owner to owner. This region was witness to continuous strife between Native Americans and white settlers. By the middle of the 1700s white settlers' supremacy had been established.

By 1760 there were 61 New Hampshire towns, most named nostalgically after British towns. Eighty-six more New Hampshire towns came into being by 1775.

New Hampshire was a British colony for 150 years. It revolted against the British rule during the American Revolution. The raid on Fort William and Mary in 1774 in Portsmouth Harbor was the only battle fought here. This raid is also referred to as the first battle of the Revolutionary War.

New Hampshire's colonial history is ridden with tales of greed, fear and survival on one hand and honor, spirit and invention on the other.

New Hampshire has the distinction of having been home to America's 14th President- Franklin Pierce. The election of 1852 saw this New Hampshire lawyer reach the White House. Since 1952 New Hampshire has been the holding the presidential primary in every presidential election year.

New Hampshire had been a textile stronghold till the late 1950s. However, with the collapse of the textile industry New Hampshire changed focus to technology.|Indian-American Rocker Anand Bhatt wasn't always loved by fans & friends. Growing up in a Chicago suburb, he faced horrific racist challenges as a young boy. From other children urinating on his personal belongings to flat out violence, it is apparent that racism & white supremacy still thrive in the United States.

"I remember being told almost every day by other children and their parents that I was going to Hell because I was neither white nor Christian," says Bhatt when asked to describe his youth, "some of my little friends were forbidden to play with me for this reason alone." Surprisingly, such awful treatment can count as mild compared to some of the other horrors the Indian-American youth faced. For instance, during a 4th of July celebration when Bhatt was only 10 years old, a large drunk stranger (an adult at that) began yelling at him & threatening violence because of his ethnicity. A scare that no child should have to experience. Bhatt and his family have endured ridicule, violence, house eggings, and regular insults. At other times, friends would invite the young Anand Bhatt to seemingly innocent outings such as bowling or parties, when in fact it was a church event and a group-wide sham to attempt to convert him to Christianity. Bhatt adds, "One time in 1st grade, my best friend got points and won a contest for tricking me into coming to Sunday School. [Laughs] He at least shared his candy prize with me." It's heartbreaking to realize that all of these racist acts, and the ones you're about to read about, were done with impunity.

Bhatt was kind enough to answer more questions:

WHAT WAS ONE OF THE WORST RACIST MOMENTS YOU REMEMBER?

"That would be all of 7th & 8th grade. I was literally an untouchable for a period. There was a school-wide popular game called [racial slur omitted] in which if a white kid touched an Indian he would have to do 50 push-ups. Of course the unruly testosterone-filed teenager I was, I got sick of this treatment and went out of my way to touch every kid that rubbed me the wrong way. The other kids retaliated by stealing my clothes & shoes during gym and peeing on them. This was a 2 year ordeal in which teachers and other authority figures never intervened."

DID PEOPLE ATTEMPT TO HOLD YOU BACK BECAUSE OF RACE?

"I was once up for the role of Jesus in a community production of Jesus Christ Superstar, but apparently this caused a bit of a local uproar. Some girl even told me to my face that she was completely offended that a brown-man would even be considered to play Jesus."

HOW DID YOUR PARENTS REACT WHEN YOU WOULD COME HOME UPSET?

"My parents were helpful, all though their generation's philosophy seems to be 'Ignore It and Don't Speak Up for Fear of the White Man's Wrath.' I have quite the mouth on me and am sure I've embarrassed them my share [laughs]. They knew what to say to help get situations out of my mind though. My father came here from India in the 60s to go to school in Florida, so he knows racism [smiles]."

DID YOU EVER WANT TO RETALIATE?

"If you asked me at fifteen I probably would have joined whatever the South Asian equivalent of the Black Panthers would have been. Thankfully my emotions came out in some lucrative guitar riffs instead. Once I hit puberty though, started attracting girls, and joined a band, I was having too much fun to be concerned with anger. "

HOW DID YOU OVERCOME RACISM?

"Believe it or not, I'm actually grateful for any childhood hardships. Nothing eradicates entitlement like racism. I came to the conclusion at a young age that nobody else is going to stand up for me, and I have only myself to set and reach my goals. Also, I'm aware that people will go out of their way to try to focus on your negatives no matter how much positive action you're trying to take. So much so, that it's hard to take them seriously after a point. By not expecting decision makers, bosses, producers, labels, agents or media to help me when I need I think I've been lucky enough to pave some of my own way. Of course, help & support is always appreciated and needed, I'm usually surprised when I get it."

DO YOU STILL FACE RACISM?

"[Laughs] Hardly a day goes by when a seemingly reasonable or educated person doesn't say to me 'You Speak English Really Well.' Also, People still admit to me that when they initially met me they expected me to have an accent. Now that's far from violent, but it's bluntly racist.

Hollywood proves to be pretty racist still. Unless you're white or black, you're a tough sell to the powers that be. Other than Aziz Ansari, I know of very few other Indians in the biz that haven't change their name or been coincidentally Christian to get a decent gig. Kal Penn, Russell Peters, and Naveen Andrews notwithstanding. To make things worse, many available roles are comedic in nature in a really racist way. To the actors' credit though, doing the accent is pretty fun.

I also have heard that American radio directors are scared to play my songs on the air out of fear that the DJ can't pronounce my name. This is only a problem in America. I'm sure the S. African and European DJs may not intuitively know how to pronounce my name either but they don't seem to have a problem giving it a try."

WHAT ARE YOUR FANS LIKE TODAY?

"Looking at my Facebook Fan Page, fans range from students to single mothers. One thing they all seem to have in common is they're really smart and really fun. You can tell by the conversations they have on wall posts. Most of them are pretty good looking too. Anand Fans are some of the greatest people I've ever met! Life would be boring without them."

The important thing to remember is that these are recent events, Anand Bhatt graduated high school in the 90s and still confronts racism today. If you look at his television appearances and interviews on YouTube, it is shocking to notice the amount of racial slurs in some of the comments. Amazingly, Bhatt doesn't appear angry at all. Bhatt closes the interview on a positive message of hope for all that experience racism: "One of the most important things I've learned, is the ability to not take people's harmful actions personally. It turns out in every case that the racist is just poorly expressing his own personal frustrations. It is counter-productive to hate the hater."

If you or anyone you know is feeling the pressures of racism, feel free to reach out to Anand Bhatt on his Facebook Wall to ask for support, advice, or even simply to share your story!

Anand Bhatt found on Facebook at

Anand Bhatt Television Interview:

Rock Personality and actor Anand Bhatt is known for his rock/pop solo career and as frontman of the tribal hardcore group Anand clique. Bhatt got a great career launch at a young age from his work with Jim Martin (Faith No More), and has walked the GRAMMY red carpet as an award consideree and an academy voting member.|Whenever a film franchise sees a change in the director's chair, you have to wonder how much the style of the film is going to be altered. This change could be good or bad depending on the circumstances and the quality of the directors that you're talking about. It's a risky proposition in the first place, but it's even riskier if the first movie was popular. That's because all involved might want to stay at least somewhat faithful to what's already been created, while the new director would more than likely want to add his own imprint on the picture. That's the case for The Bourne Supremacy as Paul Greengrass took over for Doug Liman, the director of The Bourne Identity.

In this sequel, Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) is still trying to put his past together as he's trying to gain his memory back with the help Marie (Franka Potente). Bourne and Marie have moved to a secluded area where they believe no one will find them. That dream soon fades once they realize that someone is out to eliminate Bourne for good. Believing his old organization is behind the attack, Bourne sets out to do as he promised the last time he spoke to them. He goes out of his way to "Bring the fight right to their doorstep."

Seeing as I am a big fan of the first film in the Bourne franchise, I couldn't wait to see the sequel. I was hoping it would be entertaining and I wanted it to live up to its predecessor if possible. As Greengrass took control, I had to wonder how similar the two films would be, but I also wanted to know how far the films would venture from the original material in the novels.

Although there is a new director and a darker tone, there are actually a ton of similarities that remain when comparing the two movies. Some of the music is exactly or close to the same and even some of the scenes are almost mirror images of what's shown in the first one. I understand wanting to stay close to the original, but I didn't like taking so many scenes from the first and only making slight alterations to them and placing them in the sequel. It makes it look like they didn't put too much effort into it even though I'm sure that's not the case. I think they were trying to build some continuity within the franchise and wanted them to connect in that way.

As far as the connection to the books goes, staying faithful to them wouldn't be legitimately plausible when bringing The Bourne Supremacy to the big screen. That's due to the fact that some of the characters that are in both the first Bourne movie and the novels have been either killed off or excluded all together. You obviously wouldn't be able to use the dead guys and they probably felt that a couple of the characters that are excluded wouldn't necessarily fit here. The inability to use these characters can actually be seen as a positive of sorts, because it opens the door for changes that allow the story to travel in new directions. That enables both new and existing fans alike to get into the movie and discover new things whenever they occur.

Another thing that's positive here are all of the action sequences. Much like the first film, The Bourne Supremacy contains a mixture of car chases, foot chases and hand to hand combat. I loved the car chase in the Doug Liman film and I loved the chase in this one just as much. They're done differently, but they're both equally exciting. The one in the Greengrass version is more violent, physical and like the movie as a whole, it's darker.

A good portion of the action that is shown in this film is also done differently, because it has more of a faster pace working for it. Some of it has a nice build up right before everything breaks out and the actual action set pieces are not as low-key or as patient as most of the set pieces in the original film. The faster style definitely makes this feel more like an action film than a spy film at times. I thought all of it was fun to watch, but if I had to point out the weakest part of the action that's on display here, I would have to say that it's easily the hand to hand combat. It's not bad, but it simply doesn't hold up to the car and foot chases that we see.

When compared to The Bourne Identity, I can't say that The Bourne Supremacy is as good simply due to the fact that it's not. It does have several good things about it though. The actors perform well with Matt Damon once again standing out in a role that was seemingly made for him, and everyone else handles their jobs just as professionals should. There's also a solid story and as I stated earlier, a ton of action. This is a fast and thrilling spy movie that offers fun and excitement while doing a great service to the franchise that it's created for.

Score: 3.5/5

Rating: PG-13

Director: Paul Greengrass

Cast: Matt Damon Franka Potente Brian Cox Joan Allen Karl Urban Julia Stiles Gabriel Mann

Film Length: 108 minutes

Release Date: July 23, 2004

Distributor: Universal Pictures|Oh! You better watch out,

You better not cry,

You better not pout,

I'm telling you why:

Santa Claus is coming to town!

Okay, let me quickly clarify, this is no music class lessons that I'm taking you through, neither have I lost my marbles to believe that Santa Claus has preponed his visit to India during the current festival season of Diwali. This is the song that India is singing along, as they welcome the most powerful (gentle)man of the world, Mr. Barack Obama during the auspicious season of Diwali. Well indeed, India is celebrating the festival of lights, "Diwali", and people all over the world especially people in India are making the most of this festival season by sharing and spreading happiness all around, savouring home-made delicacies, burning oil lamps, and lighting up the sky with fireworks during Diwali.

Ho ho ho...says Mr. President

Coming to celebrate Diwali with the people of India is the supposed apostle of change, Mr. Barack Obama, who gets air-dropped in Mumbai today in his mean machine, the Air Force One, promising India a bag of goodies in the form of a permanent seat at the UNSC, and a string of high-pitched strategic and business relations resulting in creating jobs and increased sale of goods for both India and America.

However, the President of the most powerful country of the world that India had invited is no longer as powerful as he used to be before the recent mid-term elections in the USA. No doubt, he still is the President of the United States of America and that he occupies the White House...but, after being betrayed by his ardent disciples, Obama no longer enjoys the supremacy over the legislative. Justifiably, Obama's followers-of-change have lost their faith in their shepherd and no longer believe in his change mantra of "Yes We Can", which promised to change the lives of Americans.

In the bargain, Mumbai gets a Botox

The people of America have gone rogue and by voting the Republicans over the Democrats, Obama can feel the force of the Hurricane hit him so hard that his motivation of visiting India and the who's-who of the business and the political world undoubtedly will lose its fizz. Coming to think of it, Mr. President will have to obtain permissions for every decision - small or big - that he makes, before he goes ahead implementing it. So, isn't Obama's trip to India more of a jolly good adventurous holiday rather than a serious strategic tie-up engagement?

Well, looking at the glass that is half-full, Mumbai has benefited in a big way with Obama's visit. Civilians in this part of the country have been screaming and complaining for years about potholes on the road, unhygienic conditions, uncut trees, bad traffic management, corruption, etc., but these complains were never actioned upon. However, the upcoming arrival of Obama has kept the city administration (who never worked all their lives) so busy that they are leaving no stone unturned to welcome a foreigner to this city. Only if they had the same concern for the people of this city, life would be different!

But Mumbai has no complains and the people in fact would like to welcome Obama every year...because in the bargain, our streets & walls get polished and sanitized, our traffic gets managed better, the security beefs up, our trees get pruned, all in all the city gets a facelift. All thanks to Obama, we now believe that if given a chance our city administration, The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), can actually work and can be effective if need be. Obama has brought a change in the perception of the people of Mumbai, emphasizing that BMC can make a difference...Yes we Can!

Should we blame him for all?

"Change" is what the Democrats promised the American people since they came in power on Jan 2009. However, since there was no positive change seen, the very same people who elected Obama badmouthed him calling him names, eventually throwing him out of total control in the recent mid-term elections. This showcases that America has a strong democracy and if need be...the civilians of the nation can make a powerful man powerless.

But the question to ask ourselves is that, "Is Obama and his administration responsible for all the rot in America". Obama took charge of America when the global recession had already hit this planet. He took charge when the Iraq war was already in the sixth year since American invasion in Iraq in 2003. He took charge when unemployment and the growth rates were already dipping. Very clearly indicating that, Obama has inherited most of the problems from his predecessors.

Nevertheless, the man who once was hit by the mighty shoe, Mr. George Bush, admits in his new book called "Decision Point", that as the President of the USA, he had made errors involving the Iraq war. He admits that he felt like a captain of a sinking ship towards the end of his presidency when dealing with recession. So, do we blame and point fingers at Obama or do we need to give his administration some more time to turnaround a sticky situation. Because eventually, America and the world, do not have an option of doing business with any other planet other than the recession-hit-planet Earth which is currently weathering a stormy weather.

The people of India are waiting to unwrap the gifts that Obama has brought for India and are hoping that this partnership together, will benefit both India's and America's economic condition.

Post-script:

Today, in the next hour from now, Obama would make his first speech at the Taj in memory of the 26/11 victims. And when Obama speaks, the world listens. Undoubtedly, if Obama is not one of the best Presidents that America has...he is one of the best orators that the world has ever seen and heard. And I personally am keen to know, whether he has inherited this talent as a genetic gift or has he studied the art of powerfully communicating in simple words and creating that much-needed impact on his listeners.|St. Petersburg in Russia is well known for its art museums, palaces, churches, monuments, heritage sites, huge courtyards and operas. If you wish to visit this amazing place, you must book your hotel beforehand. A large number of luxurious Saint-Petersburg hotels are there to make your stay memorable and comfortable. Most of the hotels here are very well furnished and are adorned with beautiful decorations throughout the year. You can avail online booking facility provided by the hotels. Pamper yourself and your family with mouth watering delicacies served at your room and restaurants. The hotels offer you with affordable sightseeing in the city. People who love "white Christmas" must surely visit St. Petersburg. Hermitage, the famous art museum should be on the top of your schedule here.

The city is considered as a symbol of Russian supremacy and culture since both the administration and its citizens strive to preserve the heritage. Heritage hotels arrange night city tours to give the tourists a feel of the Russian culture. Yachting is a very good option in the daytime. Even a leisurely boat ride on the rivers and canals of the city is amazing since you get to see a number of memorable city sights. Many cathedrals spot the city. Do visit them for their elegant architecture.

Sardinia, a luxurious destination on the Mediterranean Sea is one of the most sought after beach resorts in Europe. You will get the best information on the shopping destinations, restaurants and sightseeing right from the hotel lobby. Sardinia hotels offer special holiday packages throughout the year. You get the best seafood dishes and high quality wines at the restaurants. Hotels in Sardinia will arrange all the necessary equipment for surfing, yachting and other water sports. Night life has lot to offer to a tourist here. Most of the pubs and hangout are open throughout the night. Sardinia beach hotels also offer special packages for historical sites like Bastione San Remy, Museo Archeologico Nazionale, the archaeological museum and over 20 underground caves for you to visit

This island is strongly is recommended for those who are fond of unadulterated relaxation with tranquility all around. There is not much chaos in the pubs too as the people enjoy their drink and soak in the musical ambience. St Petersburg bed and breakfast is just another attraction of the place. As a foodie you must not miss this island with so many culinary delicacies to choose from.

Porto Cervo, the capital of Costa Smeralda in north western Sardinia offers pristine beaches of Liscia Ruja, Romazzino and many others. The visual opulence is mesmerizing with luxury villas, hotels, golf courses, design boutiques, tranquil evenings and an enchanting night life. Porto Cervo hotels have been the centre of attraction for the Italian elite for long. The beaches and resorts are always packed up with the wealthy on their pleasure trips. So, if you are planning a trip to Russia this summer, just get online now. List of Sardinia beach hotels are there to accommodate your presence to the city. Go through their details and find the best comfort within your affordability.|The introduction of apartheid policies coincided with the adoption by the ANC in 1949 of its Programme of Action, expressing the renewed militancy of the 1940s.

The Programme embodied a rejection of white domination and a call for action in the form of protests, strikes and demonstrations. There followed a decade of turbulent mass action in resistance to the imposition of still harsher forms of segregation and oppression.

The Defiance Campaign of the early 1950s carried mass mobilization to new heights under the banner of non-violent resistance to the pass laws. These actions were based on the philosophy of Mohandas Gandhi.

A critical step in the emergence of non-racialism was the formation of the Congress Alliance, including the Indian Congress, the Coloured People's Congress, a small white congress organisation (the Congress of Democrats) and the South African Congress of Trade Unions.

The Alliance gave formal expression to an emerging unity across racial and class lines that was manifested in the Defiance Campaign and other mass protests of this period, which also saw women's resistance take a more organised character with the formation of the Federation of South African Women.

In 1955, a Freedom Charter was drawn up at the Congress of the People in Soweto. The Charter enunciated the principles of the struggle, binding the movement to a culture of human rights and non-racialism. Over the next few decades, the Freedom Charter was elevated to an important symbol of the freedom struggle.

The Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), founded by Robert Sobukwe and based on the philosophy of Africanism and anti-communism, broke away from the Congress Alliance in 1959. The PAC slogan 'Africa for the Africans' was strongly pan-Africanist in nature.

The State's initial response, harsh as it was, was not yet as draconian as it was to become. Its attempt to prosecute more than 150 anti-apartheid leaders for treason, in a trial that started in 1956, ended in acquittals in 1961. But by that time, mass organized opposition had been banned.

Matters came to a head at Sharpeville in March 1960 when 69 PAC anti-pass demonstrators were killed. A state of emergency was imposed, and detention without trial was introduced.

The black political organizations were banned, and their leaders went into exile or were arrested. In this climate, the ANC and PAC abandoned their long-standing commitment to non-violent resistance and turned to armed struggle, waged from the independent countries to the north.

Top leaders still inside the country, including members of the newly formed military wing Umkhonto we Sizwe (Spear of the Nation), were arrested in 1963. At the 'Rivonia trial', Mandela, Sisulu, Ahmed Kathrada and others convicted of sabotage (instead of treason, the original charge) were sentenced to life imprisonment.

The 1960s was a decade of overwhelming repression and of relative political disarray among blacks inside the country. Armed action from beyond the borders was effectively contained by the State.

The resurgence of resistance politics in the early 1970s was dramatic. The Black Consciousness Movement, led by Steve Biko (who was killed in detention in 1977), reawakened a sense of pride and self-esteem in black people. News of the brutal death of Steve Biko reverberated around the globe and led to unprecedented outrage.

As capitalist economies sputtered with the oil crisis of 1973, black trade unions revived. A wave of strikes reflected a new militancy that involved better organization and was drawing new sectors, in particular intellectuals and the student movement, into mass struggle and into debate over the principles informing it.

The year 1976 marked the beginning of a sustained anti-apartheid revolt. In June, school pupils of Soweto rose up against apartheid education, followed by youth uprisings all around the country. Youth activism became the single most effective arm of the politics of resistance in the 1980s.

The United Democratic Front and the informal umbrella, the Mass Democratic Movement, emerged as legal vehicles of democratic forces struggling for liberation. Clerics played a prominent public role in these movements.

The involvement of workers in resistance took on a new dimension with the formation of the Congress of South African Trade Unions and the National Council of Trade Unions.

Popular anger was directed against all those who were deemed to be collaborating with the government in the pursuit of its objectives, and the black townships became virtually ungovernable. From the mid-1980s, regional and national states of emergency were enforced.

The Inkatha movement, which from 1979 became increasingly oppositional to the externally-based liberation movement, played a straddling role in the 1980s. Stressing Zulu ethnicity and traditionalism, Inkatha claimed a mass following in the rural areas of the KwaZulu homeland.

Its leader, Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi, carved a distinctive niche for himself, refusing 'independence' for KwaZulu but squeezing patronage from the apartheid State by casting Inkatha in the role of loyal opposition. The State sought to use Inkatha structures as surrogates in its war against the liberation movement.

Battles for turf between Inkatha and the ANC became a very destructive accompaniment to South Africa's transition to democracy. Developments in neighboring states in the face of mass resistance to white-minority and colonial rule, notably Portuguese decolonization in the mid-1970s and the abdication of Zimbabwe's minority regime in 1980, left South Africa exposed as the last bastion of white supremacy.

The Government embarked on a series of reforms, an early example being the recognition of black trade unions to stabilize labor. In 1983, the Constitution was reformed to allow the coloured and Indian minorities limited participation in separate and subordinate Houses of Parliament. The vast majority of these groups rejected the Tricameral dispensation but it was nevertheless kept intact by the apartheid regime.

PW Botha further modified the Westminster constitutional model by instituting an executive presidency and doing away with the function of Prime Minister. In 1986, the pass laws were scrapped. These initiatives went hand-in-hand with the militarization of society and the ascendancy of the State Security Council, which usurped the role of the executive in crucial respects.

Under the states of emergency, a comprehensive counter-insurgency strategy was implemented to combat what, by the mid-1980s, was an endemic insurrectionary spirit in the land. At the same time, the international community strengthened its support for the anti-apartheid cause. A range of sanctions and boycotts was instituted, both unilaterally and through the United Nations (UN).

FW de Klerk, who had replaced Botha as State President in 1989, announced at the opening of Parliament in February 1990 the unbanning of the liberation movements and release of political prisoners, notably Nelson Mandela.

A number of factors led to this step. International financial, trade, sport and cultural sanctions were clearly biting, even if South Africa was nowhere near collapse, either militarily or economically.

These sanctions were called for in a co-ordinated strategy by the internal and external anti-apartheid movement in South Africa. The ANC, enjoying wide recognition as the foremost liberation organization, was increasingly regarded as a government in waiting. International support for the liberation movement came from various countries around the globe, particularly from former East Bloc and Nordic countries as well as from the Non-aligned Movement.

During the 1980s, the ANC moved its headquarters from London, England to Lusaka, Zambia. The other liberation organizations increasingly experienced various internal and external pressures and did not enjoy much popular support.

Internal and external mass resistance continued and it was obvious that Botha's strategy of reform initiatives combined with repression had failed to stabilize the internal situation.

To outside observers, and also in the eyes of growing numbers of white South Africans, apartheid stood exposed as morally bankrupt, indefensible and impervious to reforms. The collapse of global communism, the withdrawal of Soviet and Cuban support for the MPLA regime in Angola, and the negotiated independence of Namibia formerly South-West Africa, administered by South Africa as a League of Nations mandate since 1919  did much to change the mindset of whites. No longer could whites demonize the ANC and PAC as fronts for international communism.

White South Africa had also changed in deeper ways. Afrikaner nationalism had lost much of its raison deter. Many Afrikaners had become urban, middle class and relatively prosperous. Their ethnic grievances, and attachment to ethnic causes and symbols, had largely waned.

A large part of the NP's core constituency was ready to explore larger national identities, even across racial divides, and yearned for international respectability. Apartheid increasingly seemed more like a straitjacket than a safeguard. In 1982, disenchanted hardliners had split from the NP to form the Conservative Party, leaving the NP open to more flexible and modernizing influences. After this split, factions within the Afrikaner elite openly started to pronounce in favor of a more inclusive society causing more friction with the NP government, which increasingly became militaristic and authoritarian.

A number of business, student and academic Afrikaners held meetings publicly and privately with the ANC in exile. Secret talks were held between the imprisoned Nelson Mandela and government Ministers about a new dispensation for South Africa with blacks forming a major part of it.

Inside the country, mass action became the order of the day. Petty apartheid laws and symbols were openly challenged and removed. Together with a sliding economy and increasing international pressure, these developments made historic changes inevitable.|By the late 19th century, the limitations of the Cape's liberal tradition were becoming apparent. The hardening of racial attitudes that accompanied the rise of a more militant imperialist spirit coincided locally with the watershed discovery of mineral riches in the interior of southern Africa. In a developing economy, cheap labor was at a premium, and the claims of educated Africans for equality met with increasingly fierce resistance.

At the same time, the large numbers of Africans in the chiefdoms beyond the Kei River and north of the Gariep (Orange River), then being incorporated into the Cape Colony, posed new threats to racial supremacy and white security, increasing segregationist pressures.

Alluvial diamonds were discovered on the Vaal River in the late 1860s. The subsequent discovery of dry deposits at what became the city of Kimberley drew tens of thousands of people, black and white, to the first great industrial hub in Africa, and the largest diamond deposit in the world. In 1871, the British, who ousted several rival claimants, annexed the diamond fields, which fell in sparsely populated territory to the west of the main corridors of northward migration.

The Colony of Griqualand West thus created was incorporated into the Cape Colony in 1880. By 1888, the consolidation of diamond claims had led to the creation of the huge De Beers monopoly under the control of Cecil Rhodes. He used his power and wealth to become Prime Minister of the Cape Colony (1890 1896) and, through his chartered British South Africa Company, conqueror and ruler of modern-day Zambia and Zimbabwe.

The mineral discoveries had a major impact on the subcontinent as a whole. A railway network linking the interior to the coastal ports revolutionized transportation and energized agriculture. Coastal cities such as Cape Town, Port Elizabeth, East London and Durban experienced an economic boom as port facilities were upgraded.

The fact that the mineral discoveries coincided with a new era of imperialism and the scramble for Africa brought imperial power and influence to bear in southern Africa as never before.

Independent African chiefdoms were systematically subjugated and incorporated by their white-ruled neighbors. The most dramatic example was the Zulu War of 1879, which saw the Zulu State brought under imperial control, during which King Cetshwayo's impis inflicted a celebrated defeat on British forces at Isandlwana.

In 1897, Zululand was incorporated into Natal. The South African Republic (Transvaal) was annexed by Britain in 1877. Boer resistance led to British withdrawal in 1881, but not before the Pedi (northern Sotho) State which fell within the Republic's borders had been subjugated. The indications were that, having once been asserted, British hegemony was likely to be reasserted.

The southern Sotho and Swazi territories were also brought under British rule but maintained their status as imperial dependencies, so that both the current Lesotho and Swaziland escaped the rule of local white regimes.

The discovery of the Witwatersrand goldfields in 1886 was a turning point in the history of South Africa. It presaged the emergence of the modern South African industrial State.

Once the extent of the reefs had been established, and deep-level mining had proved to be a viable investment, it was only a matter of time before Britain and its local representatives again found a pretext for war against the Boer republics of Transvaal and the Orange Free State.

The demand for franchise rights for English-speaking immigrants on the gold-fields (the Uitlanders) provided a lever for applying pressure on the government of President Paul Kruger.

Egged on by the deep-level mining magnates, to whom the Boer government seemed obstructive and inefficient, and by the expectation of an Uitlander uprising, Rhodes launched a raid into the Transvaal in late December 1895.

The raid's failure saw the end of Rhodes' political career, but Sir Alfred Milner, British High Commissioner in South Africa from 1897, was determined to overthrow Kruger's government and establish British rule throughout the subcontinent. The Boer Government was eventually forced into a declaration of war in October 1899.

The mineral discoveries had a radical impact on every sphere of society. Labor was required on a massive scale and could only be provided by Africans, who had to be drawn away from the land.

Many Africans did respond with alacrity to the opportunities presented by wage labor, traveling long distances to earn money to supplement rural enterprise in the homestead economy.

In response to the expansion of internal markets, Africans exploited their farming skills and family labor to good effect to increase production for sale. A substantial black peasantry arose, often by means of share-cropping or labor tenantry on white-owned farms.

For the white authorities, however, the chief consideration was ensuring a labor supply and undermining black competition on the land. Conquest, land dispossession, taxation and pass laws were designed to force black men off the land and channel them into labor markets, especially to meet the needs of the mines.

Gradually, the alternatives available to them were closed, and the decline of the homestead economy made wage labor increasingly essential for survival.

The integration of Africans into the emerging urban and industrial society of South Africa should have followed these developments, but short-term, recurrent labor migrancy suited employers and the authorities, which sought to entrench the system.

The closed compounds pioneered on the diamond fields, as a means of migrant labor control, were replicated at the gold-mines. The preservation of communal areas from which migrants could be drawn had the effect of lowering wages by denying Africans rights within the urban areas and keeping their families and dependants on subsistence plots in the reserves.

Africans could be denied basic rights if the fiction could be maintained that they did not belong in 'white South Africa' but to 'tribal societies' from which they came to service the 'white man's needs'. Where black families secured a toehold in the urban areas, local authorities confined them to segregated 'locations'. This set of assumptions and policies informed the development of segregationist ideology and, later (from 1948), apartheid.|Government policy in the Union of South Africa did not develop in isolation, but against the backdrop of black political initiatives. Segregation and apartheid assumed their shape, in part, as a white response to Africans' increasing participation in the country's economic life and their assertion of political rights.

Despite the government's efforts to shore up traditionalism and to retribalize them, black people became more fully integrated into the urban and industrial society of 20th-century South Africa than happened elsewhere on the continent. An educated elite of clerics, teachers, business people, journalists and professionals grew to be a major force in black politics.

Mission Christianity and its associated educational institutions exerted a profound influence on African political life, and separatist churches were early vehicles for African political assertion. The experiences of studying abroad and in particular interaction with black people struggling for their rights elsewhere in Africa, in the United States and the Caribbean, also played an important part. A vigorous black press, associated in its early years with such pioneer editors as JT Jabavu, Pixley Seme, Dr Abdullah Abdurahman, Sol Plaatje and John Dube, served the black reading public.

At the same time, African communal struggles to maintain access to the land in rural areas posed a powerful challenge to the white State.

Traditional authorities often led popular struggles against intrusive and manipulative policies. Government attempts to control and co-opt the chiefs often failed.

Steps towards the formation of a national political organisation of 'coloureds' began around the turn of the century with the formation of the African Political Organisation (APO) in 1902 by Dr Abdurahman in mainly the Cape Province. The African National Congress (ANC), founded in 1912, became, however, the most important black organization drawing together traditional authorities and the educated African elite in common causes.

In its early years, the ANC was concerned mainly with constitutional protest. Worker militancy emerged in the wake of the First World War, and continued through the 1920s.

It included strikes and an anti-pass campaign given impetus by women, in particular in the Free State, resisting extension of the pass laws to them. The Industrial and Commercial Workers' Union, under the leadership of Clements Kadalie, was (despite its name) the first populist, nation wide organization representing blacks in rural as well as urban areas. But it was short-lived.

The Communist Party, formed in 1921 and since then a force for both non-racialism and worker organisation, was to prove far longer-lasting.

In other sections of the black population too, the turn of the century saw organized opposition emerging. Gandhi's leadership of protest against discriminatory laws gave impetus to the formation of provincial Indian congresses.

The principles of segregationist thinking were laid down in a 1905 report by the South African Native Affairs Commission, and continued to evolve in response to these economic, social and political pressures. In keeping with its recommendations, the first Union government enacted the seminal Natives Land Act in 1913. This defined the remnants of their ancestral lands after conquest for African occupation, and declared illegal all land purchases or rent tenancy outside these reserves.

The reserves ('homelands' as they were subsequently called) eventually comprised about 13% of South Africa's land surface. Administrative and legal dualism reinforced the division between white citizen and black non-citizen, a dispensation personified by the Governor-General who, as 'Supreme Chief' over the country's African majority, was empowered to rule them by administrative fiat and decree.

The government also regularized the job color bar, reserving skilled work for whites and denying African workers the right to organize.

Legislation, which was consolidated in the Natives (Urban Areas) Act, 1923, entrenched urban segregation and controlled African mobility by means of pass laws. The pass laws were intended to enmesh Africans in a web of coercion designed to force them into labor and to keep them there under conditions and at wage levels that suited white employers, and to deny them any bargaining power.

In these and other ways, the foundations of apartheid were laid by successive governments representing the compromises hammered out by the National Convention of 1908 1909 to effect the union of English and Afrikaans-speaking whites.

Divisions within the white community remained significant, however. Afrikaner nationalism grew as a factor in the years after union.

It was given impetus in 1914 both by the formation of the National Party (NP), in a breakaway from the ruling South African Party, and by a rebellion of Afrikaners who could not reconcile themselves with the decision to join the First World War against Germany. In part, the NP spoke for Afrikaners impoverished by the Anglo-Boer/South African War and dislodged from the land by the development of capitalist farming.

An Afrikaner underclass was emerging in the towns, which found itself uncompetitive in the labor market as white workers demanded higher wages than those paid to blacks.

Soon, labor issues came to the fore. In 1920, some 71,000 black mineworkers went on strike in protest against the spiraling cost of living, but the strike was quickly put down by isolating the compounds where the migrant workers were housed.

Another threat to government came from white workers. Immigrant white workers with mining experience abroad performed much of the skilled and semi-skilled work on the mines. As mine-owners tried to cut costs by using lower-wage black labor in semi-skilled jobs, white labor became increasingly militant. These tensions culminated in a bloody and dramatic rebellion on the gold-fields in 1922, which the Smuts government put down with military force. In 1924, a Pact government under Hertzog, comprising Afrikaner nationalists and representatives of immigrant labor, ousted the Smuts regime.

The Pact was based on a common suspicion of the dominance of mining capital, and a determination to protect the interests of white labor by intensifying discrimination against blacks. The commitment to white-labor policies in government employment such as the railways and postal service was intensified, and the job color bar was reinforced with one of its main objectives to address what was known as a 'poor white problem'.

In 1934, the main white parties fused to combat the local effects of a world-wide depression. This was followed by a new Afrikaner nationalist breakaway under Dr DF Malan.

In 1936, white supremacy was further entrenched by the United Party with the removal from the common voters' roll of the Africans of the Cape Province who qualified. Meanwhile Malan's breakaway NP was greatly augmented by an Afrikaner cultural revival spearheaded by the secret white male Afrikaner Broederbond and other cultural organizations during the year of the Voortrekker Centenary Celebrations (1938) as well as anti-war sentiment from 1939.|The War that followed the mineral revolution was mainly a white man's war. In its first phase, the Boer forces took the initiative, besieging the frontier towns of Mafeking (Mafikeng) and Kimberley in the northern Cape and Ladysmith in northern Natal. Some colonial Boers rebelled, however, in sympathy with the republics. But after a large expeditionary force under Lords Roberts and Kitchener arrived, the British advance was rapid. Kruger fled the Transvaal shortly before Pretoria fell in June 1900.

The formal conquest of the two Boer republics was followed by a prolonged guerrilla campaign. Small, mobile groups of Boers denied the imperial forces their victory by disrupting rail links and supply lines.

Commandos swept deep into colonial territory, rousing rebellion wherever they went. The British were at a disadvantage owing to their lack of familiarity with the terrain and the Boers' superior skills as horsemen and sharpshooters.

The British responded with a scorched-earth policy. This included farm burnings and looting and the setting-up of concentration camps for non-combatants, in which some 26,000 Boer women and children died from disease. The incarceration of black (including coloured) people in the path of the War in racially segregated camps has been absent in conventional accounts of the War and has only recently been acknowledged. They too suffered from appalling conditions and some 14,000 (perhaps many more) are estimated to have died.

At the same time, many black farmers who were in a position to meet the demand for produce created by the military, or avail themselves of employment opportunities at good wages, benefited from the War. Some 10,000 black servants accompanied the Boer commandos and the British used Africans as laborers, scouts, dispatch riders, drivers and guards.

The War also taught many Africans that the forces of dispossession could be rolled back if the circumstances were right. It also gave black communities the opportunity to re colonize land lost in conquest, which enabled them to withhold their labor after the War. Most supported the British in the belief that Britain was committed to extending civil and political rights to black people.

In this they were to be disappointed, as in the Treaty of Vereeniging that ended the War, the British agreed to leave the issue of rights for Africans to be decided by a future self-governing (white) authority.

All in all, the Anglo-Boer/South African War was a radicalizing experience for Africans.

Britain's reconstruction regime set about creating a white-ruled dominion by uniting the former Boer republics (both by then British colonies) with Natal and the Cape.

The most important priority was to re-establish white control over the land and force the Africans back to wage labor. The labor-recruiting system was improved, both internally and externally. Recruiting agreements were reached with the Portuguese authorities in Mozambique, from where much mine labor came.

When, by 1904, African sources still proved inadequate to get the mines working at pre-War levels, over 60,000 indentured Chinese were brought in. This precipitated a vociferous outcry from proponents of white supremacy inside South Africa and liberals in Britain.

By 1910, all had been repatriated, a step made easier when a surge of Africans came forward from areas such as the Transkeian territories and the northern Transvaal, which had not been large-scale suppliers of migrants before.

This was the heyday of the private recruiters, who exploited families' indebtedness to procure young men to labor in the mines. The Africans' post-war ability to withhold their labor had been undercut by government action, abetted by drought and stock disease.

The impact of the Anglo-Boer/South African War as a seminal influence in the development of Afrikaner nationalist politics became apparent in subsequent years.

The Boer leaders most notably Louis Botha, Jan Smuts and JBM Hertzog  played a dominant role in the country's politics for the next half a century.

After initial plans for Anglicization of the defeated Afrikaners through the education system, and numerical swamping through British immigration, were abandoned as impractical, the British looked to the Afrikaners as collaborators in securing imperial political and economic interests.

During 1907 and 1908, the two former Boer republics were granted self-government but, crucially, with a whites-only franchise. Despite promises to the contrary, black interests were sacrificed in the interest of white nation-building across the white language divide. The National Convention drew up a constitution and the four colonies became an independent dominion called the Union of South Africa on 31 May 1910.

The 19th-century formally non-racial franchise was retained in the Cape but was not extended elsewhere, where rights of citizenship were confined to whites alone.

It was clear from the start that segregation was the conventional wisdom of the new rulers. Black people were defined as outsiders, without rights or claims on the common society that their labor had helped to create.|In 1795 the British occupied the Cape as a strategic base against the French, controlling the sea route to the East.

After a brief reversion to the Dutch in the course of the Napoleonic wars, it was retaken in 1806 and kept by Britain in the post-war settlement of territorial claims. The closed and regulated economic system of the Dutch period was swept away as the Cape Colony was integrated into the dynamic international trading empire of industrializing Britain.

A crucial new element was evangelicalism, brought to the Cape by Protestant missionaries. The evangelicals believed in the liberating effect of 'free' labor and in the 'civilizing mission' of British imperialism. They were convinced that indigenous peoples could be fully assimilated into European Christian culture, once the shackles of oppression had been removed.

The most important representative of the mission movement in South Africa was Dr. John Philip, who arrived as superintendent of the London Missionary Society in 1819. His campaign on behalf of the oppressed Khoisan coincided with a high point in official sympathy for philanthropic concerns.

One result was Ordinance 50 of 1828, which guaranteed equal civil rights for 'people of co lour' within the colony and freed them from legal discrimination.

At the same time, a powerful anti-slavery movement in Britain promoted a series of ameliorative measures, imposed on the colonies in the 1820s, and the proclamation of emancipation, which came into force in 1834. The slaves were subjected to a four-year period of 'apprenticeship' with their former owners on the grounds that they must be prepared for freedom, which came on 1 December 1838.

Although slavery had become less profitable because of a depression in the wine industry, Cape slave-owners rallied to oppose emancipation.

The compensation money, which the British treasury paid out to sweeten the pill, injected unprecedented liquidity into the stagnant local economy.

This brought a spurt of company formation, such as banks and insurance companies, as well as a surge of investment in land and wool sheep in the drier regions of the colony in the late 1830s. Wool became a staple export on which the Cape economy depended for its further development in the middle decades of the century.

For the ex-slaves, as for the Khoisan servants, the reality of freedom was very different from the promise. As the wage-based economy developed, they remained a dispossessed and exploited element in the population, with little opportunity to escape their servile lot.

Increasingly, they were lumped together as the coloured people, a group which included the descendants of unions between indigenous and European peoples, and a substantial Muslim minority who became known as the 'Cape Malays' (misleadingly, as they mostly came from the Indonesian archipelago).

The coloured people were discriminated against on account of their working-class status as well as their racial identity. Among the poor, especially in and around Cape Town, there continued to be a great deal of racial mixing and intermarriage throughout the 1800s.

In 1820, several thousand British settlers, who were swept up by a scheme to relieve Britain of its unemployed, were placed in the eastern Cape frontier zone as a buffer against the Xhosa chiefdoms.

The vision of a dense settlement of small farmers was, however, ill-conceived and many of the settlers became artisans and traders. The more successful became an entrepreneurial class of merchants, large-scale sheep farmers and speculators with an insatiable demand for land.

Some became fierce warmongers, who pressed for the military dispossession of the chiefdoms. They coveted Xhosa land and welcomed the prospect of war involving large-scale military expenditure by the imperial authorities.

The Xhosa engaged in raiding as a means of asserting their prior claims to the land. Racial paranoia became integral to white frontier politics. The result was that frontier warfare became endemic through much of the 19th century, during which Xhosa war leaders such as Chief Maqoma became heroic figures to their people.

By the mid-1800s, British settlers of similar persuasion were to be found in Natal. They too called for imperial expansion in support of their land claims and trading enterprises.

Meanwhile large numbers of the original colonists, the Boers, were greatly extending white settlement beyond the Cape's borders to the north in the movement that became known as the Great Trek in the mid-1830s. Alienated by British liberalism, and with their economic enterprise usurped by British settlers, several thousand Boers from the interior districts, accompanied by a number of Khoisan servants, began a series of migrations northwards. They moved to the Highveld and Natal, skirting the great concentrations of black farmers on the way by taking advantage of the areas disrupted during the mfecane.

When the British, who were concerned about controlling the traffic through Port Natal (Durban), annexed the territory of Natal in 1843, those emigrant Boers who had hoped to settle there returned inland.

The Voortrekkers (as they were later called) coalesced in two land-locked republics, the South African Republic (Transvaal) and the Orange Free State. There, the principles of racially exclusive citizenship were absolute, despite the trekkers' reliance on black labor. With limited coercive power, the Boer communities had to establish relations and develop alliances with some black chiefdoms, neutralizing those who obstructed their intrusion or who posed a threat to their security.

Only after the mineral discoveries of the late 1800s did the balance of power swing decisively towards the colonists. The Boer republics then took on the trappings of real statehood and imposed their authority within the territorial borders that they had notionally claimed for themselves.

The Colony of Natal, situated to the south of the mighty Zulu State, developed along very different lines from the original colony of settlement, the Cape.

The size of the black population left no room for the assimilationist vision of race domination embraced in the Cape. Chiefdoms consisting mainly of refugee groups in the aftermath of the mfecane were persuaded to accept colonial protection in return for reserved land and the freedom to govern themselves in accordance with their own customs. These chiefdoms were established in the heart of an expanding colonial territory.

Natal developed a system of political and legal dualism, whereby chiefly rule was entrenched and customary law was codified. Although exemptions from customary law could be granted to the educated products of the missions, in practice they were rare. Urban residence was strictly controlled and political rights outside the reserves were effectively limited to whites. Natal's system is widely regarded as having provided a model for the segregationism of the 20th century.

Natal's economy was boosted by the development of sugar plantations in the subtropical coastal lowlands. Indian-indentured laborers were imported from 1860 to work the plantations, and many Indian traders and market gardeners followed.

These Indians, who were segregated and discriminated against from the start, became a further important element in South Africa's population. It was in South Africa that Mohandas Gandhi refined from the mid-1890s the techniques of passive resistance, which he later effectively practised in India. Although Indians gradually moved into the Transvaal and elsewhere, they remain concentrated mainly in Natal.

In 1853, the Cape Colony was granted a representative legislature in keeping with British policy, followed in 1872 by self-government. The franchise was formally non-racial but also based on income and property qualifications. The result was that Africans and coloured people formed a minority although in certain places a substantial one  of voters.

What became known as the 'liberal tradition' at the Cape depended on the fact that the great mass of Bantu-speaking farmers remained outside its colonial borders until late in the 19th century. Non-racialism could thus be embraced without posing a threat to white supremacy.

Numbers of Africans within the Cape colony had had sufficient formal education or owned enough property to qualify for the franchise. Political alliances across racial lines were common in the eastern Cape constituencies. It is therefore not surprising that the eastern Cape became a seedbed of African nationalism, once the ideal and promise of inclusion in the common society was so starkly violated by later racial policies.|Modern historiography specialists have long argued that an essential segment in the study of human evolution is inextricably tied to the basic understanding that societies generally emerge, progress and fall cyclically. Such frequency in social evolution is not just a consequence of endogenous factors, it also results from the impact of the external environment, be it close - neighboring constituencies vying for the same resources - or far - as part of a larger geographical area.

History teaches us another fundamental truth, predominantly unveiled in social sciences: humans are inherently prone to believing in the danger of the unknown, the fear that uncertainty - when present in life - brings an intolerable level of complexity in handling daily activities. Economists, in tandem with the larger group of social scientists, ascribe the word "risk" to this angst.

Risk lies in everyday life. From birth to death and in between the terrestrial episode called life, humans experience a sophisticated relationship with risk and utilize it as a powerful catalyst to furthering their interests. We fear the unknown not just in temporal terms - e.g.: what will tomorrow be? - but also in more practical, present-day terms, that is, what will happen today?

In assessing the rectitude of our daily decisions, the analysis of the environment we live in becomes of critical importance. There emerges then the need to know, understand and act on a variety of variables that make up our ecosystemic reality. Neighbors are a major part of that reality.

The indubitable observation that humans are 'sociable animals' implies a life in community, which in turns posits the sharing of interests, destinies and geography. We share our lives with neighbors, other humans whom we don't fundamentally know and whom we believe are different from us. Neighbors, in continental philosophy, are the 'constitutive other' as opposed to 'same'. Neighbors are different, and because of that, they must be hazardous to our very existence, hence "hell is other people" (Jean-Paul Sartre).

Consequently, our desire to know the 'other' and what they're undertaking forces us to constantly be in a question mode: ergo, we resort to spying. Espionage is ingrained in basic human instincts from cradle to grave. First, we ape our relatives, then our acquaintances and later our neighbors. In that quest for knowledge, humans recklessly spy on each other in a bid for power. Once they determine with a reasonable degree of comfort the neighbor's strengths, the overwhelming tendency is to match it, surpass it, annihilate it, keep it at a politically acceptable level, or use a combination of all these options if the socio-historical continuum of events demands it.

Doubtless, the need to control the military and economic standing of neighbors is the quintessential, albeit hidden, dogma of modern geopolitics. Doctrinal differences may abound, but a studious analysis of contemporary events demonstrates clearly that wars and other man-engineered crises have historically proven to be good ways to rebalance powers among neighbors, or more precisely, within geographical zones. Crises, facts have shown, drive innovation and quality of life.

Espionage is not a recent discipline within political science. It has been a staple of human history for the past 2,000 years and even before. Throughout history, nations have risen or fallen based on their ability to collect data from rivals and use that body of knowledge to gain a competitive edge. History also suggests that societies that show a disinclination for 'outer research' of their environment, and consequently, a significantly lower number of exogenous interactions - be it cordial or belligerent - with others have been weakened over time. The high frequency of wars between nations in the 'Old Continent' explains the relative superiority that Europe had over, say, Amerindians and Africans for the past few centuries, first in slavery and then colonization.

Espionage is rooted in modern life

After two atrocious global wars, countless medium-size conflicts and a dogmatic cold-war between capitalism and communism, political and military leaders seem to have finally gauged the idiocy of lethal conflicts with planetary implications. The notion of 'dtente', that is, the easing of strained relations in the political phraseology, gives nations the imaginary assurance that they may all coexist pacifically and a major conflict is preventable once greater cooperation between societies subdues the inherent quest for power that causes hostilities.

Acquiescing that there exists a permanent dtente within the current geopolitical landscape is an optical illusion because it goes counter the very human urge to monitor the neighbor in order to know him or dominate him, if not annihilate him. This can be very easily illustrated in instances where spies are caught in so-called 'friendly' territories. Take the example of Israel's Mossad agents being arrested in the United States.

The nuts and bolts of modern state espionage lie in a sophisticated and complex apparatus that all nations, and peculiarly global superpowers, have invented to carry out data-collecting and monitoring activities in peace time. Embassies, with their massive bureaucracies, specialized technocrats and their diplomatic inviolability, are preeminent on that list. They are essential in monitoring the host country's social dynamics and report to their respective governments. Simply put, an embassy is, de jure, a stranger turned neighbor.

Next are supranational organizations that populate the global political, social and economic sphere. Their local representations and periodically published studies may also serve an intelligence purpose. Finally, aid agencies and so-called 'humanitarian' organizations are critical in gauging so-called 'underdeveloped' nations' economic ability and progress in their development. It is no coincidence that major countries in the developed sphere do not customarily accept 'aid programs' from their counterparts unless excruciating circumstances dictate that such refusal would be politically unacceptable.

Strategic studies and the modern economic literature are replete with topics referring to Japan's, and to a lesser extent, Asian dragons' ability to use economic espionage at the end of the Second World War to gain a competitive edge over erstwhile powers such as the United States and Great Britain. The necessity to monitor and direct the continent's economic reconstruction, and the panic of a potential dominance by communist Russia, also led the United States to implement the Marshall Plan in Europe from 1948 through 1952.

Businesses thrive from spying more than the military

A noteworthy myth in today's world is that espionage is principally the province of military strategists and national armies. Evidence from authoritative business intelligence magazines, leading governmental studies and a massive body of knowledge from academia have clearly explained the causal relationship between firm profitability and espionage. Differently stated, governments tend to always transfer intelligence data to their domestic industries, whether they are at war or at peace.

As a result, the military-industrial complex benefits considerably from intelligence and such prerogatives are then disseminated into other firms in the economic fabric. As an illustration, it would be fairly understandable that a firm like Boeing, which derives a substantial portion of its revenues from government's contracts and sale of military aircrafts, is more attuned to certain developments in US intelligence gathering than a financial services giant like Citibank.

Nevertheless, businesses have also parlayed their gargantuan economic clout into a very successful data-collection enterprise. The plethora of tools available to business executives nowadays is strikingly sophisticated and effective. Even if it is not exhaustive, a good analysis of such tools must look at their source and their degree of macro-economic interconnectedness.

On one hand, external mechanisms allow at the macro-level business enterprises to gather information from competitors and control how such information can be utilized to thwart rivals, increase their own market primacy, or do both. When they share a community of interests vis--vis a new market or are in an oligopolistic situation, companies are routinely willing to join hands provided, of course, that the risk-payoff ratio of a single venture is not immensely superior to that of a joint venture. Tacit collusion, that is, the market situation where two firms agree to play a certain strategy without explicitly saying so, is a fine illustration of business intelligence sharing.

In practice, firms engage in economic espionage via economic sections of embassies, chambers of commerce, lobbying groups, industry groups, specific studies from consultants, and monies granted for academic research in particular fields of interest. Concomitantly, they guard against intelligence threats by massively supporting intellectual property laws.

On the other hand, a sophisticated internal approach allows companies to stay abreast of latest developments within their industry. First and foremost, they hire to their corporate boards or for senior positions, experienced former government officials and high-rank military leaders who had been privy to high-value strategic insights during their public tenure.

This is immensely beneficial to the hiring side because a former cabinet member, a congressman or a four-star general, can possess a breadth and depth of experience and knowledge of past, present and future topics that is considerably worth more than countless external consulting reports. Second, economic intelligence departments and government relations departments also fulfill data gathering roles through research, lobbying and interacting with industry groups.

Cyber-warfare, the new cold war

As the planet becomes technologically more intertwined, novel tools and modus operandi are being made available to governments and private interests to collect specific intelligence. These tools and procedures are an intricate combination of old and new procedures which simultaneously penetrate nations' military, economic and social constructs to extirpate valuable bits of knowledge.

Defense experts are calling these emerging asymmetric conflict tools 'cyber-warfare'. Due to the plethoric ramifications they present and the simultaneous dual tasks they may serve to fulfill (attack and defend) when engineered in certain ways, I label this group Modern Cyber-warfare Gear ("MOCYG").

MOCYG, as it stands, involves the offensive use of various techniques to derail a nation's infrastructure, perturb the military and financial systems of a country with the aim of crippling its defense responsiveness and the integrity of economic data, or accomplish other destructive aims based on the attacker's incentives and strategy. Security specialists and military researchers have classified these techniques into 5 major groups: computer forensics, viral internet tactics, assault on computer networks or software, hacking and espionage.

The idiosyncratic power of cyber-crime lies in its 'stateless' nature, its capacity to be inexpensively controlled and deployed, and the vast damage it can exert. Given the judicial vacuum created by cyber-warfare techniques, nations are rushing to build up legislative safeguards to prosecute offenders even though criminologists argue such undertakings are largely inefficient at the moment.

A memorable cyber-criminal event occurred in Estonia in 2007 when more than 1 million computers, allegedly from Russian-based servers, were used to simultaneously cripple state, business and media websites in a modus operandi analogous to the "shock and awe" military tactic. That attack ended up costing Tallinn's authorities tens of millions of US dollars.

China, a cyber-giant in progress

Upward socioeconomic trends in the People's Republic of China are well known to international masses and covered profusely in western news media. So are Chinese authorities' singular understanding of democracy and human rights as well their overt wish to play a bigger geopolitical role in world affairs. However, the quiet revolution China is experiencing lies within the astronomical investment country authorities are making in top notch universities so as to catapult China into the top league of technological giants, along with the United States and Japan. Given the size of such educational outlays, Chinese authorities must believe that a major competitive edge can be gained in the technology field and such advantage can be converted or transferred into other sectors of their mushrooming economy.

Top western sinologists and other think tanks are closely monitoring these academic developments because they understand the basic notion that future geopolitical dynamics will inextricably be tied to how successful Chinese will be at leveraging technology to boost their future 'global penetration'.

The smart tactic is that, while future chief engineers are being trained at world-class institutions such as University of Science and Technology at Hefei, Harbin Institute of Technology, Beijing University and Tsinghua University, China is concurrently putting a veil of secrecy around its information systems and cyber-infrastructure. The country may be notorious today for its copyright infringement cases or intellectual property violations, but it is inconspicuously gearing up for tomorrow's technological primacy that its expansionist aspirations may dictate.

China also investigates currently available ways and means to unearth state-of-the art synergy tools that can be leveraged between its major government departments and state agencies as it prepares to enter the 'knowledge economy'. Authorities view this coordination effort as an indispensable step forward because it adds another layer of centralization to a government structure that is built around the canon of 'consolidated power'.

More specifically, country leadership has summoned top minds in technology and auxiliary fields to synergistically engineer the future cyber-infrastructure that will solidly mark China's imprint in the digital landscape. This task is colossal, and the vastness of it effects precludes obviously an analytical granularity. Several hundreds of thousands of Chinese computer engineers, regrouped under ad hoc commissions, think tanks and strategy centers are the backbone of this emerging 'digital army'.

They work under the aegis of brilliant specialists whose unquestioned patriotism and in-depth expertise are unparalleled at such high seniority levels; this group includes Liang Guanglie, Wan Gang and Li Yizhong. The first is the current minister of defense, who works in conjunction with the People's Liberation Army and the Central Military Commission to manage the largest military force in the world (ca. 3 million) and oversee its strategic evolvement.

The second is the head of the Ministry of Science Technology and is mechanical engineer and auto expert. The third is the Minister of Industry and Information Technology, a cabinet position pivotal for the country's information systems development.

Anemic US IT investments

Equipped with this super cyber-security gear, China seems to be winning, or is in a significant position within, the ongoing global cyber-war. In a sense, the country is not an 'emerging' superpower as western analysts and social science specialists would like to call it. It is already a superpower in the fullest sense of the concept.

The term 'emerging superpower' is presently preferred in academic and business literature as well as in media parlance because it is more politically palatable to the elite and other classes of citizens in traditionally influential economies (G8) who fear the psychological and social implications of welcoming new colossi in the select club of the powerful.

Security experts and top military minds in the United States are truly concerned that the Chinese massive IT investment dwarfs America's and do not hesitate to point to the geopolitical implications of such a chasm. They note that the countless cyber-attacks from China and Russia are just a start of the new cyber 'Cold War' of the 21st century.

It is a fact that many foreign-engineered digital attacks have targeted many industrialized countries' military systems, power grids, and financial infrastructure in the past few years. Yet governments and military forces at present have limited capacity to detect or infiltrate the attacker, counter the attack, and prevent future assaults.

US defense officials and business leaders understand the looming threat but believe its intensity and gravity constitute a hyperbole. However, authoritative statistics from the Government Accountability Office, US Congress reports, and academic studies indicate evidently that the world leader has not shown hitherto the political willpower to tackle the digital gap in its cyber-security infrastructure.

Truth be told, politicians in Washington, Pentagon strategists, and the intelligence community at large have long known of and understood the nature of the menace. Notwithstanding, a series of geopolitical events forced them to transfer certain topics into budgetary oblivion at the credit of more pressing, more 'visible' national security threats that are effortlessly noticed by constituents (e.g.: terrorist attacks).

A few factors explain Washington's inability, or budgetary lethargy, in addressing the cyber-warfare threat. First is the geostrategic complacency derived from the fall of communist Soviet Union and the ensuing inertia that global unipolarism usually creates.

Second, America's military apparatus is currently 'distracted' by two ongoing wars and engaged in a host of relatively minor security missions around the world. Adding to those involvements, there is the corollary 'war on terror' that has mobilized since 2001 colossal resources to thwart further domestic attacks.

'Domestic' in this sense refers to an incredibly enormous geographical area because it encompasses US conventional soil and the related territories, American overseas diplomatic missions, its military bases, transnational organizations where the US holds significant strategic interests (e.g.: NATO headquarters and military stations), and the countless aid, religious, and humanitarian outposts around the world.

Third, the diversity and criticality of issues at hand force the US government and congressional leaders to prioritize their budgetary efforts. The current economic despondency bodes ill for any serious endeavor in tackling underinvestment issues in information technology because the country is pecuniarily limited and cannot afford to continuously print money (risk of inflation and currency devaluation) or borrow from... China.

US budding cyber-security grid is solid

Despite the socio-economic gloom, the Obama administration has shown in the past 6 months a strong level of commitment in assuring the integrity of the nation's information assets. He appointed late December Howard Schmidt, a renowned computer security specialist and former Microsoft security executive, as White House cyber-security czar. Other high-profile nominations have followed in the army ranks and other key departments and government agencies such as Homeland Security, Treasury, the FBI and the CIA.

The efforts appear to be coordinated and effectively reaching their desired goals, from the Pentagon's launching of a giant "cyber-command" unit to the CIA's and FBI's massive 'hiring spree' of computer engineers and cyber-security specialists. International cooperation with other allies is also part of the undertaking; US intelligence agencies are thus partnering with foreign counterparts such as Britain' MI5 and MI6, Israel's Mossad, Germany's Bundesnachrichtendienst (Federal Intelligence Service, BND) and Militrischer Abschirmdienst (Military Counterintelligence Agency, MAD) to address emerging threats.

Private interests are equally gearing up. Businesses are investing massively in IT infrastructure and upgrading computer networks, and working jointly with government agencies. They are also granting rising subsidies to think tanks and academia to help in this effort.

The combination of efforts has to be successful because an absence of effectiveness in cyber-warfare measures can be 'lethal' to US global supremacy. Judging by the great havoc cyber attacks had catapulted onto Estonia in 2007, hyperbola ought not to be barred in this topic.

Based on the latest estimations, US nominal GDP is nearly 3 times that of China ($14.5 trillion vs. $4.5 trillion), but the latter's healthier growth rate is helping bridge that gap gradually. Thus, many forecasters - and the proverbial 'conventional wisdom' - assume that it will take Beijing many decades to attain America's economic clout and level.

That said, in the hypothetical scenario that a cyber-warfare erupts between both countries, a stronger China may only need to considerably crush US economic productivity and therefore its GDP to claim victory and financially surpass its rival. Absent effective security systems, China, or any other foe, may only need to assault vital arteries of the US military-industrial complex: power grids, financial transaction systems, Federal Reserve System, US Armed Forces' computer systems and networks, Congress' and White House's IT infrastructures, etc. It's easy to imagine the massive damage electricity failure can do to a country's transportation, financial, and military systems.|Lou Dobbs, the former anchor host of "MONEYLINE" on CNN, created a business television show that features large corporate business executives. For the past twenty years on this show, he has been a disciple of capitalism and an associate to the corporate business executives that he report.

Dobbs, now a journalist, has been outraged by the topic of illegal immigration and decides to backfire on these large business executives for out sourcing. In a "60 Minutes" interview with Lesley Stahl, Dobbs says he supports immigration and respects legal immigrants as he worked side by side with immigrant groups while growing up in his Idaho farm. Dobbs also expresses his opinions on illegal immigrants as they ruin health services, over populating educational systems, and burdening tax payers for using food stamps. He believes there is a strong possibility that all illegal immigrants can be deported but does not want immigrant groups to accuse him of racism.

Summary of Truth, Fiction and Lou Dobbs

During a CNN program of Lou Dobbs' program on contagious diseases, one of Dobbs' correspondents reported that "there had been 7,000 cases of leprosy in this country over the previous three years." A week later, the Southern Poverty Law Center - the civil rights group that who is responsible for criticizing Dobbs, demanded that CNN run a correction on the correspondent's statistics.

Dobbs then sat down with two officials from the law center on his show "Lou Dobbs Tonight" and express his idea that immigrants were responsible for 7,000 cases of leprosy in the U.S. in the last 3 years. Dobbs has become an economic hero for middle class Americans and one economic issue he feels endangering the middle class is illegal immigrants. He strongly feels illegal immigrants are stealing jobs and endangering the lives of Americans.

Another issue that transmits with illegal immigrants is leprosy. During the CNN show on contagious diseases, Dobbs' correspondent reported, "There were about 900 cases of leprosy for 40 years. There have been 7,000 in the past three years." James Krahenbuhl, director of the National Hansen's Disease Program, questions Dobbs' statistic, correcting it by suggesting that the largest number of leprosy cases in a single year was in 1983 with only 456 cases. Dobbs admitted to New York Times writer David Leonhardt that his reported statistic was wrong and that he had corrected the mistake in a later broadcasting report.

After reviewing many of Dobbs' broadcasting reports, his reports have shown numerous incorrect statistics to mix his opinions with facts to strengthen his white supremacy sympathizers.|SURPRISING WORDS: On Election Day 2008, the New Black Panther Party for Self Defense deployed its uniformed troops outside Philadelphia polling centers wielding billy clubs in a blatant show of voter intimidation. Anti-white racial insults were hurled at potential voters and one witness claimed one Black Panther said they were "tired of white supremacy." One of the last acts of the outgoing Bush administration was to file suit against the group and one of new Attorney General Eric Holder's first acts was to dismiss that suit.

Nevertheless, Holder claimed last Friday that the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division is the "conscience of our nation." That division deals with hate crimes and voting irregularities.

Once again it's apparent that so-called hate crimes have become a one-way street in which only whites can be guilty. It's also apparent that blacks can never be accused of voter intimidation, at least according to the mindset of the "conscience of our nation."

Other surprising words were voiced by Holder's boss on Monday on the "Today Show" when he reverted to Chicago gutter speak in an attempt to appear tough on dealing with the BP oil disaster in the Gulf.

Interviewed by Matt Lauer, the president said, "I don't sit around just talking to experts because this is a college seminar, we talk to these folks because they potentially have the best answers, so I know whose ass to kick."

Now I'm aware that using the A-word is not in the same category as using the F-word or, God forbid, the N-word and both G.W. Bush and Dick Cheney and John Kerry were caught using worse expletives but never on a nationally televised morning show. At least one TV host has had the nerve to take exception to Obama's language.

Becky Quick, co-host of CNBC's "Squawk Box," said of the president using the A-word on television during pre-school hours when kids are watching, "I think you choose your words more carefully when you are on the Today Show talking with Matt Lauer, yeah, that disturbs me. But I also think that this is a way of trying to prove that I'm mad, to do exactly what everybody's been pushing me to do, and it doesn't ring true:"

Kudos to Ms. Quick for speaking the truth about Obama's phony, tough guy act which also calls into question his sense of presidential discretion.

DEPRESSING NUMBERS: Moreso in difficult economic times, teens try to work during the summer months to earn some extra money for gas, for dating purposes, and some to buy beer. Summer 2010 might find them grounded, alone and sober.

A CNBC article warns that sixteen to nineteen year olds are looking at the worse summer job market in 41 years.

Based on government employment data, an employment firm reports that a piddling 6,000 teens found jobs nationwide in the not-so-merry month of May while 9.7% of their elders were hitting the bricks. By way of comparison, 111,000 teens found jobs last May and 230,000 during the Bush economy heyday in 2006.

The report on this teen summer of employment discontent attributes the decline in youth jobs to the down economy and cutbacks, to college kids taking "high school positions," and to the recent phenomenon of retirees taking jobs previously filled by kids.

Many elders have returned to the workforce trying to make ends meet and "employers may prefer the older workers because they get a more experienced employee for their money:"

More experienced plus more mature and more dependable.

Curiously, neither CNBC nor the employment company points out another obvious cause for the dearth of jobs for young people, illegal aliens who have taken those jobs. Estimates are that one in twenty workers in America is an illegal and that up to 12 million currently reside here.

Another point not referenced is the lack of job stimulation from Obama's $787 billion stimulus package|ABSTRACT

Nowadays, no one seems to be saved in the world. Terrorism, an ugly development which has compelled the world leaders as well as the public figures to spend millions of dollars beefing up their security, has become a global threat. Amidst this seemingly tight security and threat, thousands of innocent souls have lost their lives to the annihilation called terrorism.

Statistically, it has been proved that no country of the world is exceptional to terrorist attacks. Pius Odiaka writes on the palpable fear pervading world following the series of bombings in some countries. He declares in the Guardian Newspaper, Friday, July 29th, 2005, (page 24) that "No part of the world has been left without terrorist bloodshed. From Kenya, Algeria, Egypt in Africa to many countries in the middle East and the Gulf; Indonesia, Philippine, Pakistan and India across Asia; Washington and New York in America; Spain and now London in Europe, many innocent souls have been sniffed out of existence."

The paper will present how terrorism is a threat to Global Peace. It will enumerate the category of acts of terrorism. It will also examine the causes and implications of terrorism in human advancement especially in the area of peace building and keeping. Above all, it will provide recommendations by referring to the United Nations recommendations for a global counter-terrorism strategy. It concludes by affirming that the global peace can only be achieved if the world- the leaders and the followers-condemn terrorism in all forms and ramifications, and act unconditionally and justly in their quest to providing everlasting solutions to peace, as it constitutes one of the most serious threats to global peace and security.

Introduction

In human history, terrorism is widely recognized as the world most famous enemy of mankind. As history itself will admit that terrorism is annihilation with far-reaching and destructive effects, it is the cruelest of crimes against humanity. Its remains have turned neighbours into enemies and have made our societies and the whole world unsafe for living. Its aims and applications are global and uncompromising. Neither terrorism nor is perpetrators are new. Even though it has been used since the beginning of recorded time, not history itself can keep, with precision, the number of lives and properties lost to terrorism.

No doubt, terrorism with its destructive power has reshaped the world we live in. We now live in the world characterized by rising violence and conflicts. This, in turn, has led to the world of growing mistrust, fear, division and represents a significant new threat to international justice, peace and security. This ugly development thus made Amnesty International to observe in its 2004 Report the lasting effects of the crime on humanity. This report and others provide a valid point on how terrorism or terrorist acts have made the world unsafe and how it has threatened global peace.

Historical Background of terrorism

It is pertinent to recall that forms of society and governments in the past differ from what they are today, when describing the history of terrorism and the use of terror through time. Not until 1648 (Treaty of Westphalia), there was nothing like modern nation-states. More recent is the state's monopoly on warfare or interstate-violence. The absence of central authority gave many more players opportunity to participate in the game of warfare. However, this did not make the use of terror a method of affecting a political change. In contrast to the modern era, where only nations go to war, the involvement of players such as religious leaders, mercenaries, mercantile companies, national armies and many more was considered to be lawful and normal.

Terrorist acts or the threat of such action have been in existence for millennia. So, in narrating the history of terrorism, it is important to talk about the various types of terrorism and terrorist individuals and groups. Below is the summary of the history of terrorism.

Ancient World:

Sicarii Zealots

Political scientists see the radical Sicarii offshoot of the Jewish Zealots as one of the earliest forerunners of modern terrorism. Like modern terrorists, they intended their actions to suggest a message to a wider target audience: in this instance, the roman imperial officials and all pro-Roman and collaborationists

Al-Assassin

The Hashshashin (also Hashishin, Hashsshiyyin or Assassins) were an offshoot of the Isma ili sect of the Shiite Muslims. After a quarrel about the succession of leadership in the ruling Fatimide dynasty in Cairo around the year 1090, the losing Nizariyya faction was driven from Egypt. They established a number of fortified settlements in present day Iran, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon under the charismatic leader Hasan I Sabbah.Persecuted as infidel by the dominant Sunni sect in the Muslim world; they sent dedicated suicide murderers to eliminate prominent Sunni leaders whom they considered "impious usurpers." The sect was decimated by the invading Mongols, their last stronghold being flattened by Hulegu Khan in the year 1272.Many scholars believe the term Hashshashin, a name given to them by their enemies was derived from the Arabic "hassasin(hashish user),which they are alleged to have ingested prior to their attacks, but this etymology is disputed. The sects referred to themselves as al-da-wa al-jadida, which means the new doctrine, and were known within the organization as Fedayeen.

Seventeenth century

Gunpowder Plot (1605)

On November 5, 1605 a group of conspirators, led by Guy Fawkes, attempted to destroy the English Parliament on the State Opening, by detonating a large quantity of gunpowder secretly placed beneath the building. The design was to kill King James1 and the members of both houses of parliament. In the resulting anarchy, the conspirators planned to implement a coup and restore the Catholic faith to England. However the plan was betrayed and then thwarted.

Eighteenth century

1.Sons of Liberty

The Sons of Liberty were an underground group opposed to British Rule in the colonies, who committed several attacks, most famous among these was the Boston Tea Party. No one was killed or seriously injured by any action that was taken.

2.The Terror (1793-1794)

The Reign of Terror ( September 5 1793- July 28 1794) or simply The Terror ( French: la Terreur) was a period of about eleven months during the French Revolution when struggles between rival factions led to mutual radicalization which took on a violent character with mass executions by guillotine.

The victims of the Reign of Terror totaled approximately 40,000.Among people who are condemned by the revolutionary tribunals, about 8 percent were aristocrats, 6 percent clergy 14 percent middle class, and 70 percent were workers or peasants accused of hoarding, evading the draft, desertion, rebellion, and other purported crimes.

Nineteenth century

1.Anarchism

Anarchists was the most prolific terrorists of the 19th century, with the terroristic tendencies of both nationalism and political movements of Communism or fascism still in there infancy. The disjointed attacks of various anarchists groups lead to the assassination of Russian Tsars and American Presidents but had little real political impact.

2.Tsarist Russia

In Russia, by the mid-19 th century, the intelligentsia grew impatient with the slow pace of Tsarist reforms, which had slowed considerably after the attempted assassination of Alexander II of Russia. Radicals then sought instead to transform peasant discontent into open revolution. Anarchists like Mikhail Bakunin maintained that progress was impossible without destruction. With the development of sufficiently powerful, stable, and affordable explosives, the gap closed between the firepower of the state and the means available to dissidents. The main group responsible for the resulting campaign of terror-'Narodnaya Volya' (people's will) (1878-81) - used the word 'terrorist' proudly. They believed in the targeted killing of the 'leaders of oppression'; they were convinced that the developing technologies of the age-symbolized by bombs and bullets- enabled them to strike directly and discriminately." People's Will", possessing only 30 members, attempted several assassination attempts upon Tsa. Culminating in the assassination of Tsar Alexander II on 13 March 1881, killing the Tsar as he was traveling by train.

3. Irish Republican Brotherhood

In 1867, the Irish Republican Brotherhood, a revolutionary nationalist group with support from Irish-Americans, carried out attacks in England. These were the first acts of "republican terrorism", which became a recurrent feature of British history, and these Fenians were the precursor of the Irish Republican Army. The ideology of the group was Irish nationalism.

4. Nationalist terrorism

The Fenians/IRA and the IMRO may be considered the prototype of all 'nationalist terrorism', and equally illustrate the (itself controversial) expression that "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter'. At least one of these groups achieve its goal: an independent Ireland came into being. So did an independent Macedonia, but original IMRO probably contributed little to this outcome. Some groups resorted to the use of dynamite, as did Catalan nationalists such as La Reixa and Bandera Negra.

5. John Brown

John Brown was an abolitionist who advocated armed opposition to slavery. He committed several terrorist attacks and was also involved in an illegal smuggling of slaves. His most famous attack was upon the armory at Harpers Ferry, though the local forces would soon recapture the fort and Brown, trying and executing him for treason. His death would make him a martyr to the abolitionist cause, one of the origins of American Civil War, and a hero to the Union forces that fought in it.

6. Ku Klux Klan (1865)

The original Ku Klux Klan (KKK) was created after the end of the American Civil War on December 24, 1865, by six educated middle-class confederate veterans from Pulaski, Tennessee. It soon spread into nearly every southern state of the United States. The Klan has advocated for what is generally perceived as white supremacy, anti-Semitism, racism, anti-Catholicism, homophobia, and nativism. They have often used terrorism, violence and acts of intimidation such as cross burning to oppress African Americans and other groups. The name 'Ku Klux Klan' has been used by many different unrelated groups, but they all seem to center on the belief of white supremacy. From its creation to the present day, the number of members and influence has varied greatly. However, there is little doubt that, especially in the southern United States, it has at times wielded much political influence and generated great fear among African Americans and their supporters. At one time KKK controlled the governments of Tennessee, Indiana, Oklahoma and Oregon, in addition to some of the southern U.S legislatures.

Twentieth century

Suffragette, Assassination of Archduke Ferdinand (1914), KKK(1915),Irgun (1936-1948), World War II, Nationalism and the End of Empire,Cold War proxies,,IRA,,ETA, Aum Shinrikyo (1984-1995), Achille Lauro Hijacking (1985), Lockerbie bombing (1988), Umkhonto we Sizwe (South Africa 1961-1990), PLO (1964-c.1988), Columbian terrorist groups, Munich Massacre (1972),Matsumoto incident(1994), Sarin gas attack on Tokyo subway(1995),and Oklahoma City bombing (1995) are types of terrorism and individual terrorists and groups that operated in the twentieth century.

Twenty-First Centuries

The well-celebrated September 11 (2002) attack and the Beslan school siege are recent terrorist attacks of the twenty-first century.

Terrorism: Definition of a Phenomenon

As clearly stated above, terrorism has established itself as a world phenomenon before 1648. But then, it becomes imperative to look into the true meaning of the term.Although providing a definite definition for it has been accorded with series of controversies, etymologically, the term emanates from Latin, "terrere", meaning "to frighten" via the French word terrorisme, which is often associated with the regime de la terreur, the Reign of Terror of the revolutionary government in France from 1793 to 1794.The Committee of Public Safety agents that enforced the policies of "The Terror" were referred to as " Terrorists".

The English word "terrorism" was first recorded in English dictionaries in 1798 as meaning "systematic use of terror as a policy". The Oxford English Dictionary still records a definition of terrorism as "Government by intimidation carried out by the party in power in France between 1789-1794.

The controversial issue is that the vocabulary of terrorism has become the successor to that of anarchy and communism the catch-all label opprobrium, exploited accordingly by media and politicians.The difficulty in constructing a definition which eliminates any just cause for terrorism is that history provides too many precedents of organizations and their leaders branded as terrorist but who eventually evolved into respected government. This has applied particularly to national liberation movements fighting colonial or oppressive regimes, engaging in violence within their countries often as a last resort. Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya spent years of his life lobbying the British government before his involvement with the Mau Mau rebellion. Nelson Mandela, a hero in his continent and beyond, is another convicted "terrorist" belonging to this class.

Before making a valid point, it is important to say that this piece would like to consider further statements and criticisms on the issue and recognized that there are other valid arguments on these controversial issues. However, they are not within premises of this paper.

Arriving at a universally accepted definition of terrorism which narrows down to a specific method of conducting violence instead of "all its forms and manifestations" or which makes it possible to refer terrorist acts to an international court, as for genocide and other war crimes or which makes it impossible for individual countries to outlaw activities they choose to classify as terrorism perhaps for their own political interest is a great challenge in the study of terrorism.

While the United Nations has not yet accepted a definition of terrorism, the UN's "academic consensus definition," has been put forth for consideration. And they are available for public evaluation.

In final analysis, although, it is not clear the actual number of definitions of terrorism; but it is clear that terrorism does not have respect for human lives and values. It has claimed thousands of lives of innocent souls, rendered millions of people homeless and economically handicapped. Alas, it is clearer that terrorism has turned our world into a place conducive for its existence and spread.

Effects of terrorism on global peace

Indisputably, terrorism is a threat to global peace. As it thrives well in a world such as ours- where violation of human rights, rising violence and conflicts, ethnic, national and religious discrimination, socio-economic marginalization and extreme ideology, dehumanization of victims are prominently in practice, it has succeeded in disregarding human lives and values, launching war on freedom and peace, multiplying violence and conflicts, and posting challenges of solving the problem of injustice, insecurity and declining economy.

Recommendations

In accordance with the United Nations in a report titled: Uniting Against Terrorism-Recommendations for a global counter-terrorism strategy, this paper hereby presents the following recommendations;

(1)All stakeholders-the leaders and the followers, individuals and institutions must dissuade people from resorting to terrorism or supporting it. (2) All stakeholders, in all ways and at all levels, must deny terrorists the means to carry out an attack by: - denying terrorists financial support. -denying terrorists access to deadly weapons, including weapons of mass destruction. - denying terrorists access to travel. -denying terrorists access to their targets and their desired impact. (3) All stakeholders, in all capacities, must deter States from supporting terrorists groups. (4) All stakeholders must develop State capacity to prevent terrorism by: - promoting the rule of law and effective criminal justice systems. - promoting quality education and religious and cultural tolerance. - countering the financing of terrorism. - ensuring transport security. - preventing terrorists from acquiring nuclear, biological, chemical or radiological materials, and ensuring better preparedness for an attack with such materials -improving the defense of soft targets and the response to their attack. - promoting United Nations system-wide coherence in countering terrorism. (5) All stakeholders, collectively, must defend human rights in the context of terrorism and counter- terrorism.

Even though my recommendations are fashioned out of United Nations recommendation for a global strategy, they represent a holistic and realistic approach to fighting or countering terrorism. However, if these recommendations are given the opportunity to operate or if implemented and executed properly and continuously, they are effective strategies of countering terrorism and, at the same time, ensuring a world free of violence and conflict, violations of human rights, ethnic, national and religious discrimination, political exclusion, and socio-economic marginalization

Conclusion

As you will agree with me that terrorism affects all of us, our approach to fighting or countering terrorism and ensuring a safe and peaceful world must be collective. However, it is worth noting that the world leaders, followers and stakeholders have vital roles to play in the fight against terrorism and in achieving our goals of global peace and security.

For the world leaders and stakeholders, these roles transcend attending or organizing world summit, conferences, seminars, e.t.c on the topic, and consenting to Global strategy to counter terrorism on papers. They need to commit more resources, at all levels, to the cause, be more sincere and objective in their judgments, more practical in their approach, and create enabling environments conducive for justice, conflict resolutions, human right protection, equality, stability, unity, prosperity, tolerance, peace and security.Above all, they need to promote and support ultimately because that have respect for human lives and values.

For followers and individuals, we need to carry out the message beyond conferences that terrorism is inexcusable and unacceptable. We need to engage in one- to -one education or group discussions enlightening ourselves on the devastating and destructive effects of terrorism on our lives and values, and emphasizing that terrorism is not an effective way of championing a cause, whether political, religious or otherwise. We must recognize that peace is the most precious need of humanity.|Obama is now the favorite punching bag of a lunatic fringe who sometimes refer to him as a Marxist or a communist in disguise and worse a friend of the Moslems (as he is one of them). Reminds me of the time when white supremacy was the watch word in the USA and organizations like KKK ran amuck, capturing and killing blacks. This facet of American history cannot be denied.

Times have however changed and the Black man has asserted himself, but that does not mean that he is any less a patriot or an American than the white man. A look at the history of the US army and its fights in Vietnam and other wars will show that as a percentage in relation to their population, more blacks fought for the US flag than the white man. But habits die hard and there is a lunatic fringe that just cannot accept Obama as a president of the USA. Weird statements and 'revelations' about his birth certificate, the fact that he is a communist are thrown about as if they are a gospel truth. Some snide remarks are made about the Presidents wife and that Obama is from a 'ghetto'. One could die laughing on a bed of nails at these silly comments.

What is the fact really? How do we pin the ills of the past US Presidents (all white Men) who fought unprovoked wars all over the world and depleted the US economy with the result that it is in deficit of trillions of dollars. These costly wars served no purpose and in case in all of them the US never achieved its objectives. Take any war whether it is Iraq, Iran or Vietnam, the US has swallowed the bitter pill. If the economy is now going bust, how do you pin it on Obama?

Obama has inherited a legacy of wars and near bankruptcy of the economy and I feel he is doing a good job about it. Even his policy of calling a spade a spade in regard to Israel and Pakistan is commendable. The unfortunate part is that Obama's middle name is Moslem and that is his drawback and fans the flames of a diehard minority in the USA. I want to know who the Americans want to replace Obama with. Another George Bush? Who will ensure that the US goes around with a begging bowl by unleashing some more wars?|Kazimir Malevich was an art theoretician and designer is considered to be one of the 20th century's most influential artists. He is regarded as the originator of Suprematism - a Russian abstract art movement that was characterized by the use of just a small number of colours and a few fundamental geometric shapes. Suprematism focused on pure form and its spiritual qualities. Malevich was one of the Russian avant-garde movement's most prominent members. He was also a pioneer of geometric abstract art.

Kazimir Severinovich Malevich was born near Kiev of Polish parents on the 11th of February 1878 and was the eldest of fourteen children. Malevich's father was an expert in sugar beet processing machinery. The family had to move frequently as sugar beet processing plants were generally built far away from big cities. Malevich's formal education was only rudimentary. At the age of fifteen he got his first paints and started painting. He took up studies at the Kiev School of Art in 1895.

While living in Kursk Malevich painted his earliest landscapes. In 1903 he joined the Moscow Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. The early years of Malevich's career were characterized by his participation in various avant-garde exhibitions. At the Donkey's Tail exhibition in 1912, he exhibited his Primitivist depictions of peasants.

It was in 1913 that Malevich began painting in the abstract art style which he named Suprematism, making abstract geometric patterns in the process. That same year, he had created the first ever suprematist painting - 'Black Square on White' which in his words conveyed "the supremacy of pure feeling in creative art". Only two years earlier, he had painted 'Morning in the Country' in a cubic abstract art style with cylindrical shapes of peasants being a prominent part of this painting.

1913 was also the year when Malevich was swayed by the way Mikhail Larionov interpreted futurism, an important abstract art movement, resulting in works such as 'Woodcutter', 'Peasant Woman with Buckets', and 'Morning after a Snowstorm in a Village'. These works incorporated shapes that looked as though they were enveloped in metal. Malevich designed the costumes and sets of the first Futurist opera - Victory over the Sun. At an exhibition held in 1915 in Petrograd, Malevich exhibited his geometric non-objective Suprematist paintings. After a sequence of White on White paintings in 1918, Malevich practically withdrew from abstract art painting and devoted more time to teaching and writing. He also created three-dimensional models that played a significant role in the development of Constructivism.

The year 1919 saw Malevich investigating how Suprematism could be applied in a three-dimensional way in architectural models. In 1922 he went to Leningrad where he was to remain for the final years of his life. He was given a solo exhibition in Moscow in 1929 in the Tretiakov gallery. Malevich used the representational painting style in the works he created during his last period. He passed away on May 15, 1935, a victim of cancer. The coffin he was buried in was one which Malevich himself had adorned with suprematist patterns.|Ever since the dawn of man, nothing has riled the blood above all else involving a standoff. Two men starring down each other in a battle of strength and endurance, designed to determine a victor. The strongest, fastest, most highly trained will be the one which leaves the victor. This is exactly what every hockey face off is similar to.

Every hockey game begins with this scenario; both teams select their finest warrior to go and do battle to ensure that his or her team to gain the initial edge. The whole process of a face off takes a lot less than ten seconds, but it's important, because as in all sports, controlling the ball or in this case the puck is amongst the fundamentals for victory.

If you've ever watched or played in a hockey game you know that not only do the two players involved in the face of jockey for position, but every other player on the ice does as well. Each person pushing and shoving attempting to gain a slight advantage of their opponent, anything that may benefit the team, the strength is incredible.

Then along at the exact right moment the referee lowers the puck and the fight for supremacy starts. There are one to one battles taking place all around the ice, body checks, hip checks, ice flying throughout the air and hitting players with a backlash. There's nothing like competition to make an athlete's blood boil.

All of this extreme action started with a very simple face off at center ice. One team gained the first advantage and now the game plays on, the best part of hockey may be the speed of the action, and with the first face off till the final buzzer the action never halts.Picture if that had been you standing at center ice waiting for the puck to drop, could you handle it? Of course you say yes, however do you really believe you can go one on one with somebody on skates, as well as on ice? Blood, sweat, and tears moving never taking your eye off the challenger, awaiting that exact instant to make your move.

No other sport starts with a face off like hockey it is one of the things that make it unique. The face off let's its player go back to their natural instincts of a fight for domination, and hockey manages to do it at a pace like hardly any other sport.

So the next time you want to strap up your skates and play hockey, do not forget also to put your game face on. Lining up parallel from another player will give you the adrenalin you need; the game face will give the intimidation element, to win your hockey face off.|On the Global Waterfront: The Fight to Free the Charleston 5 by Suzan Erem and E. Paul Durrenberger. Monthly Review Press: 240 pages, 2008. $17.95.

When the union's inspiration through the workers' blood shall run

There can be no power greater anywhere beneath the sun;

Yet what force on earth is weaker than the feeble strength of one,

But the union makes us strong.

This old labor hymn was written by Ralph Chaplin way back in 1915 and is the unofficial anthem of the US labor movement. It's sung at labor rallies and gatherings, but with an interesting twist. Organizers often pass out songsheets because many of the assembled labor activists don't know the words.

It's a sobering and even embarrassing moment for the US labor movement which is now down to about 8% of the private sector workers. Those who romanticize organized labor based on college history classes or nostalgic folksong fests need to remember that solidarity always begins with a hope....not a certainty.

And if solidarity leads to even a small partial victory, you can bet there will have been lots of hard work, hard feelings and heartaches along the way to that ecstatic moment when the victory celebrations begin.

Suzan Erem and E. Paul Durrenberger have put together a book that tells how solidarity really works and that yes, the words Ralph Chaplin penned can become a reality even to those of us who can't remember the lyrics without a songsheet.The book is the product of years of research and writing from a team that consists of a former union organizer and an anthropologist. You couldn't ask for a better combo.

January 19, 2000 was a bad night for the City of Charleston S.C. and the Port through which so much of it economy depends. What had been planned as a routine picket of a ship being unloaded by a non-union crew escalated into a bloody melee involving hundreds of mostly Black dockworkers and mostly white police. Even though some of the picketers were white, no one doubted that there was an ugly racial component to the behavior of the cops. It's a wonder no one was killed.

South Carolina has a long violent racial history that stretches back to the earliest slave days and many Black South Carolinians had to die before the chains of slavery and later Jim Crow were finally cast off. Although modern South Carolina likes to pretend that its days of white supremacy are over, its citizens know better.

The authors of On the Global Waterfront describe in detail what happened that January evening. Later, local police and union officials both concluded that the confrontation had simply gotten out of hand. Some workers apologized to the police the next morning for the rocks and railroad ties they had thrown. For their part, the local police wanted to settle the whole thing as simple cases of trespass. Police behavior that night was far from exemplary and their provocations and brutality had been fully recorded on video.

City officialdom wanted the whole incident disposed of quickly and quietly so as not give the city a reputation for being "troubled". Troubled ports repulsed rather than attracted the kind of shipping business that the Charleston economy had come to depend upon.

But this was a new Millennium and the realities of a globalized economy made it impossible for Charleston to quietly bury that violent evening.

The 5 men who were charged with serious felony offenses as a result of the riot become the focal point of a complex international struggle that involved competing US dockworker unions, an international network of dockworker militants who saw Charleston as an opening salvo against dockworkers everywhere, a politically ambitious rightwing Christian fundamentalist politician, competing interests among the shipping owners themselves and an expensive legal battle that managed to cross oceans before being resolved.

It would have been easy to lose readers in this bewildering story, but Suzan Erem and E. Paul Durrenberger manage to tell it without resorting to facile oversimplification. One comes away with a special appreciation for ILA Local 1422 President Ken Riley who led his local through the entire struggle with an intelligence and grace under fire that was key to their eventual victory.

Ken Riley's union was the East Coast based International Longshoremen's Association(ILA), an organization with a tainted history of corruption and gangsterism that had endeared them to the worst of the brutal shipping company owners. Ken Riley represented a new generation of dockworker leaders, people who wanted to clean up the union and adopt a militant stance toward the pressures of the new globalized economy. The oldline leadership of the ILA hated Ken Riley and everything he stood for. It would take many months before the national ILA leadership lifted a pinky finger to help Local 1422.

Fortunately, the West Coast based International Longshore and Warehouse Union(ILWU) had a much different tradition that had grown out of the bloody 1934 San Francisco General Strike. Their leadership evolved from the leftwing movements of the 1930's and their legendary former leader Harry Bridges had been accused of being a communist, not a Mafia thug. Their tradition was one of labor solidarity and alliances with social movements for peace and civil rights.

The modern ILWU leadership grasped immediately the importance of Charleston. If the international shipping industry could break ILA Local 1422 and the port of Charleston went non-union, the results could be catastrophic for dock workers everywhere. The ILWU immediately contacted Ken Riley and offered him the kind of money and international contacts he needed to save not only the 5 workers facing serious charges but his very union local.

On the Global Waterfront takes the reader step by step on how another kind of globalization was evolving, the globalization of the labor movement. As Charleston 5 defense committees sprang up and the creaky wheels of the AFL-CIO leadership began to turn in favor of ILA Local 1422, the authors make it clear that all of this was the result of long exhausting hours of work done by a core of very smart and very committed people with the support of thousands around the world.

When victory for the Charleston 5 and Local 1422 finally came in March of 2002 it was a time for joyful celebration. It also became a time of deep reflection as labor activists around the planet pondered their next move in a globalized economy when money crossed borders at light speed and the economies of entire nations were dwarfed by the largest global corporations

Global capital by its very nature seeks to cheapen the price of labor to increase its profits. To do this it must maintain efficient production while fighting to keep workers as disunited and divided as possible. But efficient modern production is difficult with a dispirited demoralized labor force, so the more far-seeing multinational corporate owners see a place for compromise with the global labor movement. This is not compromise based on any sort of moral values or sense of justice, but a cold calculation of power relationships.

It's class war. But even in war, enemies sign treaties and ceasefires while they anxiously assess what the capabilities of their adversaries might be when the peace is finally broken again.

The last chapter of On the Global Waterfront is called "Not Just Another Labor Story". The authors aren't kidding. It's easy to say,"Think globally, but act locally". But what are we exactly supposed to think about? And what actions are we supposed to take?

The morning after that bad night of violence in Charleston SC, Ken Riley and the other Local 1422 activists did not have immediate answers to those questions. But with their own formidable inner resources and the help of others around the world, they came up with some pretty good answers later on. How they did it is an organizers textbook for anyone concerned about social justice.

What Ken Riley and the members of ILA Local 1422 discovered when they took their campaign on the road was that there really is a solidarity community out there and it is truly global. We don't hear about it much from our corporate-owned media (surprise.....surprise), but it's real, it's growing and we here in the USA really need to take our place in this global community.

Whether you are a union militant, a feminist, an environmentalist, an anti-racist organizer, a peace advocate, a combination of all these things or any kind of social activist at all, it really is Global Solidarity Time.

Living in the world capital of individualistic dog-eat-dog cat-eat-mouse economics, solidarity is not something we are taught in school, inherit as part of our common culture or learn about on "Reality TV". It's going to take some effort, but the Ken Riley's of the world are patiently waiting to teach us all about it.

In our hands is placed a power greater than their hoarded gold,

Greater than the might of armies, magnified a thousand-fold.

We can bring to birth a new world from the ashes of the old

For the union makes us strong. |This week a 100-year-old Tennessee man got married for the third time; this time to a 68-year-old woman. When asked why he was marrying a woman 32 years his junior, the man said: 'Yes, I would love a sandwich.'" - Amy Poehler, of Weekend Update, on Saturday Night Live

"I really believe in infrastructure spending... I amortize my shoes over 20 years." - Canada's BC Provincial Finance Minister Carole Taylor explaining why she wore $600 new Gucci shoes when presenting the annual budget.

"We wanted to keep him off the bases." - manager Charlie Manuel (Phillies) explains Jose Reyes' (Mets) three home runs in one game.

Q: "You're the player. We like to hear it from the horse's mouth." A: (Roddick): "Go buy a horse."

"Well, I really think he shatters the myth of white supremacy once and for all!" - Rep. Charlie Rangel, after being asked his opinion of President George W. Bush

"I got to party and socialize at an Olympic level." - Bode Miller, the U.S. Olympic skier who went zero for five on Olympic gold.

"Should I go and get a ruler?" - LOST''s Kate [Evangeline Lilly], editorializes about a testosterone contest between Jack [Matthew Fox] and Sawyer [Josh Holloway].

"My No. 1 goal is to not go to jail." - Congresswoman-elect Michele Bachmann (R, MN)

"If you are not electing Christians, then in essence you are going to legislate sin." - Representative Katherine Harris (R, FL)

"Paddy was in the wrong place at the wrong time; by the look of the photographs he was also with someone who was hungrier than he was." - Neil Warnock discusses (Sheffield United goalkeeper) Paddy Kenny's biting loss of one eyebrow in a restaurant.

"I have noticed a marked difference in the way that people respond to me when I am wearing my colours." - testimony of Hells Angels member Ricky Ciarniello in a legan action against an Ontario, Canada court decision that the Angels constitute a criminal organization, saying this unfairly exposing him to fear, loathing and ridicule. The ruling stood. (The original Canadian spelling of "colours" here is not a mistake - or at least, a very old one by now.)

"Drowning has always been my biggest fear." - Janina Peters, lifeguard.

"Russian women are not very good for figure skating. They are good for building rail tracks in Siberia, for example." - Alexei Mishin, champion Evgeni Plushenko's coach.

"I believe in my heart that if Jesus were alive today he would be doing the same thing." - Madonna justifies including mock crucifixion in her stage performances.

"Cheney's defense is that he was aiming at a quail when he shot the guy: which means that Cheney now has the worst aim of anyone in the White House since Bill Clinton." - Jay Leno

Tennis star Roddick about playing the retiring Agassi: Q: "Do you feel relief that [it] is not going to happen?" A: (Roddick): "Obviously you want to play against your idols, but then again you don't want to be the guy who shot Bambi."

"A big-city feel, but redneck-friendly." - tourism slogan suggested by President Tim Newman of the Regional Visitors Authority of Charlotte, N.C., U.S.

"He scares our German shepherd to death when we are at home; so we come here." - Sue Mihalyi, explaining why she and her husband Mark watch Steeler games at a local Pittsburgh restaurant. The Steelers won the Superbowl in 2006 without her rug suffering.

"Your child, at birth, already has a deeply complicated relationship with his mother, so for the first year you are only a curiosity. As the years go by you will become an amusement-park ride. Then, a referee. And finally, a bank." - Things a Man Should Know About Fatherhood, Esquire magazine

"[African-American Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael Steele has made] a career of slavishly supporting the Republican Party." - Steny Hoyer, (D, MD)

"Keep away from the Australian women or else you will end up in prisons." - advice to his athletes from the Ugandan sports director

"She's pretty aggressive in our cars. Especially if you catch her at the right time of the month; she might be trading plenty of paint out there." - Ed Carpenter, IRL racing driver describes Danica Patrick.

"I'm glad he's showing some personality."

- Danica Patrick about Ed Carpenter, later that same day.

Madonna about her rep for being difficult: "What's the difference between a pop star and a terrorist? You can negotiate with a terrorist."

"I told the producers I'd give my left nut to host this thing." - Lance Armstrong, opening the 2006 ESPY Awards

"Activities which are not compatible with western standards." - ABC news being politically correct while describing Hamas suicide bombings.

"He a very wise man and very strong - although perhaps not so strong as his father Barbara." - Borat describes the President

"I don't support our troops....When you volunteer for the U.S. military, you pretty much know you're not going to be fending off invasions from Mexico and Canada." - Joel Stein, Los Angeles Times columnist

"I said a little prayer before I actually did the fingerprint thing, and the picture; and my prayer was basically, 'Let people see Christ through me, and let me smile.'" - (Former Republican House Majority Leader) Tom DeLay gets his mug shot.

"Something else I've learned about Secretary Rice is she loves the cool Atlantic breezes here in Nova Scotia, and she left the window open last night." - Canada's Conservative Foreign Minister Peter MacKay, amidst rumors that the two had a little something goin' on.

"When you're inviting people, you don't have to tell them this is a cold place." - Canada's BC Premier Gordon Campbell, trying to tone down 2010 Olympic promotions.

"Of course, some of it could be cops just watching the game and not responding." - Geoffrey Alpert, University of South Carolina criminologist, about (his) research showing a decline in crimes during the Super Bowl.

"We ship to all correctional institutions." - A US bookstore sign, in the age of the Internet.

"The public doesn't have a right to know anything." - RCMP spokesperson Staff Sargent John Ward responds to reporters' queries about Ian Bush's death in custody.

Q: "How different was it holding up that plate today than in Australia?" Amelie Mauresmo: "It's a different trophy. It's round; it's smaller."

"Thanks to all the perverts who voted for me." - Jessica Alba, accepting MTV's award for the Sexiest Performance in a Movie (Sin City.)

"For some people, playing a bipolar nymphomaniac may have been a challenge, but for me, I think I just played myself." - Isla Fisher, accepting MTV's award for the year's Breakthrough Performance (Wedding Crashers.)

"The publication of these cartoons will cause the world to tremble. Fire will be throughout the world if they don't stop." - English Islamic leader Dr Azam Tamimi

"1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d!" - tee shirt

"I think a relationship with a partner is intensely personal and I prefer to keep it that way." - Paul McCartney (early in the divorce.)

"We've gone through more hardships than the Jews and Charlie Brown put together." - Homer to Marge, re marriage counseling, on The Simpsons

"To the vice president's credit, he did own up to it: on FOX News he said the fault was his; he can't blame anybody else. Boy it's amazing the only time you get accountability out of this administration is when they are actually holding a smoking gun." - Bill Maher

"Any important Republican who comes out and says they didn't know me is almost certainly lying." - convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff

"It's hard to forget the day you give up your Independence." - Greg Zamlule, a US citizen, explains why he chose to get married on July 4, the same day he entered a 5k race. "There's always the chance that he'll just keep on running." - his fiance, Leslie Evans.

"We want to make it clear that if the Pope does not appear on TV and apologize for his comments we will blow up all of Gaza's churches." - a reply from the Sword of Islam terrorists, distressed by the Pope's speech which seemed to associate Islam and violence centuries ago.

"You can always get new teeth." - Teemu Selanne, a Finnish hockey player who sacrificed three whites during a quarterfinal with the US.

"McDreamy is doing the McNasty with McHottie? That McBastard!" - George on Grey's Anatomy

"It's just basketball. They're not the Big Bad Wolf and we're not the Three Little Pigs. We're all grown men." - Cavaliers forward LeBron James, re Detroit

"Here we have an organization supposedly dedicated to preventing cruelty actually inflicting cruelty to an animal to raise money to supposedly prevent cruelty to animals." - Paul Watson, founder of the Sea Shepherd Society on the Prince Rupert, BC, Canada's SPCA's plan to host a crab boil as a fund-raiser for the animal shelter.

"In the West Bank a group calling itself the Lions of Monotheism firebombed four churches, telling the Associated Press, 'The attacks ... were carried out to protest the Pope's remarks linking Islam and violence.' The irony - and this is often the case, we find - was completely lost on them." - The Daily Show's Jon Stewart

"Yeah, he looked sorry when he was out there doing doughnuts." - Matt Kenseth declines an apology from Jeff Gordon, who bumped Kenseth out of the way on the Chicagoland Speedway.

"Years ago, you used to get out and fight and run around and chase each other with a jackhammer and stuff like that. Those were the good old days." - Dale Earnhardt Jr., on track etiquette in the days before NASCAR's sponsors began to fuss about driver conduct.

"You'd like it. Puppies get killed." - The LOST character Sawyer [Josh Holloway] summarizes "Of Mice and Men" for Henry Gale [Michael Emerson] (a killer-of-bunnies.)

"After 45 years of this crap I've just started to enjoy it." - Pete Townshend, the WHO summarizes a career.

"Football's a difficult business; and aren't they prima donnas?" - Queen Elizabeth II

And that's the FunnyPoetry.com funny quote summary for 2006 - the year that Britain finally paid back the last of the money it borrowed from the U.S. and Canada during WW II, according to CNN. And why did that take so long? The interest rate was 2%, that's why. (By the way, Britain's WW I debts were never fully repaid.) On to 2007, which looks ripe to produce many more fine quotes: if for no other reason than that 25% of Americans expect the return of Jesus in the coming year according to an Associated Press-AOL News poll.|This article recounts the history of the Invisible Empire, Also known by their initials, and with their name being touted as the "sound of a rifle being cocked," the Ku Klux Klan is the name of several related organizations in the United States that have advocated white supremacy, antisemitism, anti-Catholicism, racism, homophobia, anti-Communism and nativism - hatred of those not born in our country.

As a group, the KKK has used terrorism, violence, and acts of intimidation such as cross burning and lynching to oppress mostly African-Americans, and also other social, religious and ethnic groups. Due to their illegal actions, about a century later they were the "victims" of government infiltration, as ordered by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover through the feds in the 1960s. The Bureau in Birmingham, Alabama especially used this tactic, along with playing "head games" with them, to factionalize some local Alabama klans. But the Ku Klux Klan remains somewhat prevalent in America to this very day.

This weird group of loosely knit white racial cultists actually existed in about three stages. The first one came about after the Civil War, when local government in the South was still weak or nonexistent, and fears of a black insurrection caused informal vigilante organizations to be formed in most southern communities. They were soon linked together in societies, such as the Men of Justice, the Pale Faces, the Constitutional Union Guards, the White Brotherhood and the Order of the White Rose. Finally, some rich white southerners who had fought in the Civil War got an idea.

In Pulaski, Tennessee, May of 1866, they took the name Ku Klux Klan, probably after the Greek word for circle, "kuklos," as these landowning southerners were a small circle of cronies with vested interests in maintaining slavery - or attempting its re-institution. These ex-Confederates were largely trying to oppose the Reconstruction policies of the radical Republican Congress in order to maintain "white supremacy." The Klan, being more fueled monetarily, became the most popular of the post-defeat organizations, and eventually absorbed all of the smaller groups.

The Klan had a major impact as it attempted to recruit members. It had a kind of "romantic" attraction to it, with its strange disguises, its silent parades, its midnight rides, and its self-contained mysterious internal "language" and commands, which were all found to be effective in playing upon people's fears and superstitions - at least at first. You were considered genuinely "white" if you joined it, and it also contained the markings of a paramilitary organization of the time, having been formed up by ex-Confederate soldiers.

Using horses, their riders muffled their hooves and also covered their mounts with white robes. The masked men wore long, flowing white sheets, with their faces covered with white masks, and they kept skulls on their saddle horns. Basically, their plan was to pose as the returned Confederate dead, in order to "haunt" people with guilt, and to use terror tactics to keep blacks "in their place."

The Klan usually was able to achieve its goals through terror alone, but whipping, lynching and even tar-and-feathering were also freely used, not only against blacks, but against the northern-born "carpetbaggers" and "scalawags" or "scallywags" who inhabited the South during the period of Reconstruction. Carpetbaggers were northerners who journeyed to the South for financial opportunity's sake, and scallywags were southerners who joined the Republican Party in the South. The Republicans were helping with Reconstruction, so they were particularly hated.

The advent of Radical Reconstruction brought on major changes in the southern way of life. With the northern military enforcing their rule, and the desire to make over the South in the image of the North, individuals began finding ways to take advantage of the weakened South, sometimes through commerce and sometimes through taking over government seats. Now that freedmen were able to vote, Republicans were winning elections in states where only a few years before, it had been illegal to be a Republican.

They began to be a major political party in the Democratic South. Some Democratic Party leaders denied civil rights, and most of its southern members refused to take the Oath of Loyalty to the flag of the United States, but they were helpless to stop the new "foreign" government. These were the days before the party names got switched around, with the Democrats becoming the Republicans and the Republicans being renamed the Democratic Party. Southern Democrats are still a potent force in the South nowadays.

Pretty soon, there were Republican governors and congressmen, some of whom were even black men. But the carpetbaggers, or white northerners who went south to help rebuild the reunified nation, were often only conmen opportunists trying to make a fortune off of postwar woes, and so all carpetbaggers were hated and loathed by southerners. However, far worse hatred was reserved for the scallywags, who were southerners who had become Republican, resulting in sporadic acts of violence.

The South couldn't do much about the northern-born carpetbaggers, as they would then face reprisals from the Union soldiers who were keeping close watch on them, but they occasionally attacked them - also venting their fury on the scallywags. This other group tended to be from the lower classes, and this infuriated the southerners in the middle and upper classes who no longer had their civil rights.

They were impoverished and struggling to survive, as in the portrayal of Scarlett O'Hara at the end of 1939's "Gone With the Wind." Now southern hatred was becoming even more intense, and whites were keen on taking vengeance, especially against blacks - and also nearly anyone white from the North. This really fueled the start of the Ku Klux Klan, which attempted to foster this hatred, helping them to recruit more members. About one hundred years later, if you were a northerner, you ran into this attitude the instant you set foot in Birmingham, simply by walking down the street. You would have encountered lots of "hate staring," the act of looking at someone silently with a gaze scathing with the utmost hatred, until you entered a building.

The general organization of the local klans, later called klaverns, began in April of 1867 in Nashville, Tennessee. General N.B. Forrest, the famous Confederate cavalry leader, was made Grand Wizard of the Invisible Empire. He was to be assisted by ten Genii, and each southern state constituted a Realm under a Grand Dragon, with eight Hydras staffing them. Several counties would form a Dominion controlled by a Grand Titan and six Furies. A county was a Province ruled by a Grand Dragon and four Night Hawks. And the local Den was governed by a Grand Cyclops, with two Night Hawks as aides, while each individual member was to be called a Ghoul. Anyone have a pumpkin to carve? This sounds like Halloween to me, but these people took it all very seriously.

But their internal organization was unkempt, in spite of their attempts to keep it together through all of the above assignations. Their control over their local Dens was loose, and reckless local leaders lawlessly committed acts that their leaders couldn't control. General Forrest finally ordered the disbanding of the Klan in 1869, being apprehensive of the type of power it was usually exhibiting.

Local organizations continued, some for many years, as the KKK was effective in systematically keeping black men away from the polls. This helped ex-Confederates regain political control in many states. But Congress in 1870 and 1871 passed legislation against the Klan. President Ulysses S. Grant, who led the Union forces during the Civil War, signed the Civil Rights Act of 1871. It was also called the Ku Klux Klan Act, and was designed to end it. But the KKK re-manifested itself several times.

Read the next article in this series, "The Ku Klux Klan - Ends in 20??" and the other articles in this long article series about why racism was and is so prevalent in the American South.|The Ku Klux Klan had at one time been especially dominant in the mountain, Piedmont and Deep South areas of the United States of America. But the Knights of the White Camellia, another race hatred organization, finally ruled in the Deep South, after being founded in 1867 in Louisiana.

They were reputed to have more members than the KKK, but were more conservative and less spectacular in their actions. The Knights had a similar divisional organization to the Klan, with headquarters in New Orleans. One scholar placed the Knights as actually a branch of the Ku Klux Klan, stating it was a Texas group led by Charles Lee. It was linked to a number of incidents of racial intimidation and harassment in Vidor, Texas, occurring in 1992 and 1993.

These events involved efforts to prevent the desegregation of an all-white federally assisted housing project. Among reported threats was an attempt to blow up a unit to prevent its integration. Residents of this housing project issued a statement that the Knights "carried automatic weapons on a bus they drove through the housing complex and that one Klan member offered white children $50 to beat up African-American children."

Based on that, the Texas Commission on Human Rights brought a civil suit against the Klan. One tactic nowadays used against them is to bring civil suits, for in many cases, these cowards have attacked an individual with a group of people. That makes it harder to get a criminal conviction. Groups who kill or hurt individuals are difficult to convict in criminal court, due to the "eye for an eye" nature of homicide and assault laws, but it's easier to get a conviction against them as a group in civil court.

In 1915, the second Ku Klux Klan was founded by William J. Simmons, a famous white promoter of fraternal orders. The new group proposed a much broader program than the first one, including with its white supremacy orientation a degree of nativism, or preaching against foreigners, and anti-Catholicism. They were now also more sharply oriented towards anti-Semitism, and were similar in these regards to the Know-Nothing movement of the mid-19th century.

The newfound power of the modern mass media inspired the Klan's comeback. For example there was the silent 1915 black and white film, "Birth of a Nation," which made a major point of featuring the Klan as "American heroes," and inflammatory anti-Semitic newspaper accounts surrounding the trial and subsequent lynching of Leo Frank, a Jewish man accused of murder.

Frank was the manager of a pencil factory in Atlanta, Georgia, and he was accused of killing 13-year-old employee Mary Phagan, an accusation that due to anti-Semitic fervor grew into wild tales of orgies and rapes that Frank had supposedly committed. His death by lynching through a mob of prominent citizens in Marietta, Georgia in 1915 caused the formation of the Anti-Defamation League, but also fanned the flames of unrest. Georgia politician and publisher Tom Watson used the case to build support for the renewal of the first Klan, which had been destroyed by the federal government in the early 1870s.

But now, the second KKK was a formal fraternal organization with the ability to communicate through the mails, the newly invented telephone, and the mass media. It had a national and state structure, which paid thousands of men to organize local chapters all over the country. At its peak in the early 1920s, the KKK included nearly 15% of the nation's eligible white population. Some southern groups caused lynchings and other violent activities, which in a few years made the South gain in its reputation for wanton lawlessness.

After 1920, professional promoters Elizabeth Tyler and Edward Y. Clarke helped it spread rapidly through the North this time, as well as the South. It gave the militant patriotism that had been aroused in WWI an outlet, and began stressing Christian fundamentalism. But they also began controlling politics in many communities, and in the 1920s they elected many state officials and Congressmen. The states of Texas, Oklahoma, Indiana, Oregon and Maine were being held under their pervasive influence. Their power in the Midwest began to fade in the late 1920s when a major Klan leader, David C. Stephenson, was convicted of murder.

Such evidence of corruption led to the indictment of Indiana's governor and Indianapolis' mayor, as they were both Klan supporters. Meanwhile, the Klan was organizing lynchings, as they had already done in the 1800s, and committing other crimes against humanity, such as dissuading black people from taking jobs for which they had been hired. In one case, they talked a black female schoolteacher out of assuming her position by visiting her at night while wearing their peculiar costumes, with Viking horns sticking out of their heads. They were known for their extreme measures taken against Native Americans, blacks and Jews, plus their newer anti-Catholic sentiments were sometimes violently expressed, as by the mid-1920s, their membership had peaked sharply. They now had an estimated 4 to 5 million members.

Although their active membership was probably much smaller, the Invisible Empire had finally fulfilled their own sick premise, making sure that "you'd better be racist, or else." But the Klan next proceeded to decline rapidly, and was down to about 30,000 members by 1930. In the meantime, the "Klan spirit" managed to help break the Democratic Party's hold on the South in 1928, when Roman Catholic Alfred E. Smith was running as that party's presidential candidate.

The collapse of the second Klan almost immediately afterwards was due to state laws forbidding masks and disallowing the "secret organization" elements of the group, which stemmed from the bad publicity they were receiving through the sporadically violent action of their thugs and swindlers. Also, the interest in it among the ghouls, or individual members, was disappearing, and during the Great Depression of the 1930s, their dues-paying membership pretty much disappeared. There wouldn't be further interest in it until well after WWII, especially since one of the reasons they had problems was their affiliations with the Nazis and similar groups. They tried getting together with the Neo Nazis in the 1980s, but differing ideologies quickly drove the two groups apart.

The third attempt at the Klan "rising again" was by Dr. Samuel Green of Georgia, when he attempted to revive it in the years following the Second World War, but this failed. The organization was splintered, and states were beginning to individually "bar" it as an illegal group.

But the southern civil rights activities during the 1960s, although they had begun to combat Jim Crow laws and not to particularly oppose the Klan, caused a resurgence of Klannish activities and led to the resurrection of the scattered klaverns. The most notable ones belonged to Mississippi's White Knights of the KKK groups, which were led by Robert Shelton. These newly revived groups attacked blacks and civil rights workers in many southern cities, including Jacksonville and St. Augustine, Florida, Birmingham and Montgomery, Alabama, and Meridian, Mississippi.

However, this new Klan was not organized well or strongly believed in, so by the end of the 1960s, its power and membership declined to practically nothing. The Civil Rights Movement had used their violent methods against them by practicing gentle nonviolence instead, which made them more sympathetic to the general public than what was now only a bunch of violent, hate-mongering "hoodlums." The federal government now treated them the same way they treated other organizations seen as "hostile" to American interests, and the FBI was infiltrating and monitoring them well before the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., beloved head of the Civil Rights Movement in America during the 1960s.

They were subject to federal probes, and in Birmingham, my father and the Boys were allowed free license to use "scare tactics" on the "ghouls" as individuals. They "spooked" certain important members by asking their employers about Klan affiliations, also visiting their next-door neighbors and bothering them with questions about the KKK, until these individuals quit the group. Also, MLK's death in 1968 caused some overdue hatred against them, and anti-Klan sentiment in general, as many people thought the Klan was involved in his murder.

There are some few reports on the Internet about violent attacks by blacks on Klan members in recent years, and apparently there were at least a few murders of whites. Though there was a resurgence of support in the early 1990s via the recruitment efforts of right-winger David Duke in Louisiana, he has since quit the organization, and the membership of the KKK is estimated to now be in the low thousands. With black militancy through "gangstas" on the rise, I think their days may indeed be numbered.

But it has also been estimated that there are as many as 150 Klan chapters or klaverns in the USA, with up to 8,000 members nationwide. These "clubs" run their operations in separate, small local units, and are considered to be extreme hate groups. Therefore, the modern KKK has been repudiated by the mainstream media and many political and religious leaders. Recently, a website touting "Christian Love" was found headed by a female Klan leader, under the phrase "Christina love" on the Internet. It's doubtful that they're getting much press coverage; according to the FBI, they're pretty much "over with."

Read the next article in this series, "Early American Civil Rights - Begins in 1896"and the other articles in this long article series about why racism was and is so prevalent in the American South.|The Bluetooth comes from the King Harald Bluetooth who unifies the Denmark and Norway. It's the short-distance wireless transmitting interface developed by Ericsson. It established the Bluetooth SIG (Bluetooth Special Internet Group) with IBM, Intel, Nokia and Toshiba. The bluetooth technology features with astatism, the transmitting of the audio and information and simultaneous connection with the device.

What's the bluetooth headset? It's to apply the bluetooth technology to the handfree headphone. It can free the user from the annoying cable. And the user can make the call enjoyablely. The bluetooth headphone is an efficient tool for the moving business group. The Bluetooth stereo headset with keypad introduced below is a special bluetooth gadget.

The Bluetooth makes the unwiring possible. The large mobile manufacturers like Nokia, Motorola and SonyEricsson launch the various bluetooth headsets. The bluetooth is a kind of short-distance wireless communication regulation of the low cost and large capacity. The bluetooth notebook is the notebook with the bluetooth communication function.

There is a legend of the bluetooth. In the 10th century, the princes in the Northern European strived for the supremacy. The Denmark King came forward and held down the war. And all parties come to the negotiation table. The princes became friends through the communication. Because the King likes the blueberry, he came to have the blue teeth. People called him Bluetooth King. Then the bluetooth becomes the byword of the communication. A thousand year later, when the new wireless communication regulation comes out, people also name it bluetooth.

In 1995, the Ericsson Company proposed the bluetooth concept for the first time. The bluetooth regulation works with the microwave frequency band. The transmitting speed is 1M/s. The longest transmitting distance is 10 meters. It can be increased to 100 meters by increasing the transmitting power. The bluetooth technology is opened to the whole world. It has nice compatibility in the whole world. The whole world can be connected through the low cost invisible bluetooth network.

The bluetooth technology can be used in computer, mobile phone, digital camera, camcorder, printer, fax and other home electronics. With the widespreading of the bluetooth technology, we needn't worry about the wiring of the electronics. We needn't to be upset about a large number of remote control. A mobile phone and a car key can do everything.

The Bluetooth stereo headset with keypad is just a new convenient bluetooth. The white color headset looks very suitable. It's the 128*64 OLED display. The caller's telephone number and caller ID will be displayed. And there is the phonebook synchronization function. The built-in DSP technology brings you the Echo Cancellation and Noise Reduction effect. You will enjoy the comfortable and clear voice with the small gadget. You can directly make a call from the keyboard. How convenient it is for you!

It's not all about it. You can make a call easily from the phonebook contacts. Just like a mobile phone, it can support the first letter searching contacts. You can find the people you want to call easily and quickly. With the headset, you will enjoy the great convenience to make or answer a call.|Introduction

Various dissatisfactions may result in protests in a community or a society. Religious, economical, societal and political concerns are amongst the most important factors which provoke different groups and classes to counter act against the status quo. In most of the time such displeasures end in some political gained grants, trivial or general reformations in current law and mechanism and compromise and returning to pre-challenge era. But in some occasions the depth and level of discontent is in its extreme thus the protestors are looking for a fundamental reformation or in other words revolution and subversion. Overthrow can be done by civilians or servicemen, in societal level such a protest is known as a movement. In deed, social movements are acts and processes in which some (most of time minorities but certainly not always) seek their own wills.

From one aspect movements can be divided to violent and nonviolent. Many of social movements are peaceful at start, but different events may lead them to violence; and off course in some cases their first intended shifts to a major one and may be revolution. Reading history since 19th century shows that such procedures in China, Russia, France, Czechoslovakia, Iran and etc had been caused to revolution and regime change.

In China peasants were against high tax which they were obliged to pay to Emperor, but the mismanagement and not tolerating of their claim, led to emerging of Marxist beliefs and Chinese masses movement led by Mao Tse-tung who was a communist teacher. Some campaigns caused to ousting the last emperor of the Qing dynasty and establishing the People's Republic of China.

In Russia the workers were against their low wages, but the Emperor's police violently killed 5 of them, and that was the beginning of toppling Romanov's Empire. 1917 February was the time to say good bye to Kremlin, just in 8 months form then the first communist government announced by Bolsheviks led by Lenin.

In France people had some criticisms on Empire, but neglecting their demands and treating with them brutality, expanding the bourgeoisie in state convince the people for democracy rather than dictatorship. If so this regime change took a 10 year struggle but at last people got what they want.

In Czechoslovakia as well harsh communist environment, encouraged people for a Reform, which off course soon changed to a movement for Velvet Revolution (which was coin thereafter for revolutions with reformative apparatuses). That was the beginning of so called Color Revolutions, nonviolent regime changes in ex-soviet states.

In Iran off course the main demand was on religion rather than economy, but people chose to have theological based democracy rather than living under Pahlavi's dictatorship. So they decide to change and thus drove out the 2500 years kingdom in Iran and replaced a democratic Republic government.

As it's obvious form previous lines most of social movements which had been enlarged to a national extend changed to a revolutionary movements, but in America there is an exceptional case.

Social movements in America which had been known from 1960s have a longer history; it dates back to the first days of American Revolution. Since then various and different actions, rebellions and movements flourished and diminished. Each of these events had led to a reform even a minor one.

So interesting it is that despite of numerous opponent beliefs and opinions none of them were looked for revolution. All Americans believe in America as a benevolent Empire, which have been bestowed them their rights and may be it can be called "democratic empire", which is a self contrary term as Empire and Republic are binary opposites.

Blacks' movement in 1960s in spite of all Ku Klux Klan violent actions against them was nonviolently supporters of America as well. Off course in a short period Black Power shifted to violence under leadership of intellectuals like Malcolm X, but still was supporter and fan of America.

Women', Students' and Indians' movements have been supporters of America too. This is the exceptional identity of American social movements which despite of all different heterogeneous bona fide beliefs the overall activists are unanimously supporters of status quo and by that I mean America.

Entering of Blacks into the American Scene

"Violence is as American as cherry pie."

H. Rap Brown (1943 - )

Africans entered into the "West Indies" a short after Europeans did. At first they weren't "slaves" but servants whom could buy their freedom; but as days were gone more need for worker was felt, thus the servants enslaved and that's all. Between the 16th and 19th centuries, an estimated total of 12 million Africans were forcibly transported to the Americas.

Slavery

The new discovered land seemed to be a "promised land" full of fertile lands, but much land were there, fewer men were present. Whites started to bring Blacks to there, primarily with consent and kindness and step by step interchanged their manner to kidnapping. Blacks were to be farmers or farmhands, but became indentured servants whom were enlisted to be free for more than 3 centuries.

Southern colonies was a paradise of cotton and West Indies Company as well as its eastern half was responsible for preparing demanded cotton for English textile companies. It's obvious that anybody is looking for cheaper production and so more benefit. They put at work the new black comers, low wage and high gage servants who could made money far more than their own cost.

Slavery is obscure in American Constitution, if so some hints verify it within. The Founding Fathers with no exception were slave holders. They established laws to have blacks as their property, and an obligation to send back "runaways" to their masters. Huge and vast lands really required man power to be cultivated.

Too many discourses and dialogues were common about the inimical nature of this phenomenon but it was commonly widespread in southern states. But Eli Whitney invented a machine for prolonging the debate on abolitionism.

If so Missouri Compromise succeeded to some extend in banning of slavery extension but it was an ignition for the American Civil Wars. 450,000 to 483,000 casualties -save economical and emotional losses- is just the Human cost of this simple statement: to have or not to have slaves, that's the question. From 1861 to 1865 Americans "spoke daggers" to each other to understood whether they should remain masters or simply became neighbors.

Abolitionism

The keystones of anti slavery dates back to 1783 but the organized steps towards it began years after it. Under the leadership of William Wilberforce and Thomas Clarkson, anti slavery campaigners succeeded in getting the slave trade to the British colonies abolished in 1807. The United States prohibited the importation of slaves that same year, though widespread smuggling continued until about 1862.

"Liberator" read and asked for emancipation and liberation of slaves from the starting hours of 1831 frankly, if so it took 32 years for this claim to be verified. Torture was what had been done upon poor slaves, thus those religious orthodox men whom were unable to have slaves financially or there was no need for black work in their occupation echoed for "abolitionism".

William Lloyd Garrison was one who believed in nonviolent and peaceful campaign against slavery. As the founder of the American Anti-Slavery Society (1833-70) he let the runaways Frederick Douglas and William Wells Brown to state their wishes to Northerners in his publication (North Star). But lucky he was as Elijah P. Lovejoy another American newspaper editor martyred in Alton, Illinois in defense of his right to print antislavery material in 1837.

Furthermore Whites also raided to post offices and burnt all anti-slavery stuffs; the post director refused to accept the anti-slavery materials and congress ignored to mention the issue as well.

Underground Railroad

Fugitive slave law of 1850 which asserted for sending back the runaways from the state to state in addition of a new opportunity for white jobless called "slave catcher" was another violent measure facing the blacks.

As a counter measure, Blacks developed a system called "Underground Railroad" or "Underground Railway" for transferring enslaved blacks to northern states and Canada to nonviolently free them.

Using disguise and darkness 40,000 to 100,000 blacks liberated from white tyranny and of course not "white supremacy". Liberty Line introduced from 1830 was a brilliant hope for black peace sojourners, although it granted them Compromise of 1850 and Emancipation Proclamation (1863) by slave-holder Lincoln, which freed all slaves in the United States by the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution in 1865. but violent Civil War had begun in 1861.

Not being too late must another case be mentioned; Dred Scott a slave who sued for liberty after living in a non-slave state; caused the Supreme Court to declare the Missouri Compromise unconstitutional! A national compromise violently broke simply to not grant a black his liberty.

Civil War

Emancipation Proclamation was meant that the blacks as freedmen! could (must) attend the Union Army and defend of other freemen (whites). United States Colored Troops was established involved of 178,000 blacks.

Out-Migrate vs. In-Migrate

While for decades blacks for violently brought to Americas for servitude, after emancipation in fear of Blacks' retaliation whites thought to send back them to Africa.

Liberia

From 1817 a program called American Colonization Society emerged in Washington D.C with supports of local branches, churches, and the legislatures of Border States to transport freed and free-born blacks to Africa. The program was headed by Henry Clay and Francis Scott Key whom were from prominent slave holders. They bought a land on the western coast of Africa now called Liberia. Once forcibly in-migrated blacks then "peacefully" became out-migrated by whites and gained their freedom!

Discrimination

Although, if so in lip service blacks had been freed, but it was not encompassed the social rights such as right to vote and education. They were freed to be killed for defending of whites.

It took a long more time to these rights found legitimacy. By the 15th amendment of American Constitution, Section 1, that reads: "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color or previous condition of servitude." in 1870 Blacks found suffrage at last.

But another odd occurrence took place, for the 1st time since and then the American President impeached, Andrew Johnson (1808-1875), 17th president of the United States (1865-1869) impeached accused of "violation of the Tenure of Office Act and the 'command of the army' provisions of the Army Appropriations" and also another one which conveys that Johnson had attempted to undermine Congress. Save what aforesaid Johnson was pro-blacks and support them, so simply and violently he removed.

Jim Crow

The last quarter of 19th century was the time for another plot against Blacks. Jim Crow laws were discriminational written and un-written codes to prevent Black form accessing to public services like: parks, restaurants, hotels and etc. furthermore, Black veterans weren't in an equal status as whites were. "Persons of color" weren't called "negroes" but no inequality against them was common. This traditional violence against Blacks went further as a new club called Ku Klaus Klan emerged.

Ku Klux Klan

Post American Civil War a secret society of white Southerners in the United States was formed to resist the emancipation of slaves; they used terrorist tactics to suppress Black people. In fact they were White Anglo-Saxon Protestants (WASP) whom believed America belongs to whom are 100% American. They were against immigrants whether in terms of ethnicity or religion but their major animosity was for poor Blacks. There were two in the United States, one founded immediately after the Civil War and lasting until the 1870s, the other beginning in 1915 and continuing to the present and still act violently against Blacks.

However, there were acts like Force Act in 1870 and the Ku Klux Act in 1871 which authorized the president to suspend the writ of habeas corpus, suppress disturbances by force, and impose heavy penalties upon terrorist organizations; but "white violence" could not tolerate it and in United States v. Harris in 1882, the Supreme Court declared the Ku Klux Act unconstitutional.

W.E.B Dubois

"Men of America, the problem is plain before you. Here is a race transplanted through the criminal foolishness of your fathers. Whether you like it or not the millions are here, and here they will remain. If you do not lift them up, they will pull you down."

W. E. B. DuBois

William Edward Burghardt DuBois was the United States civil rights leader and political activist who campaigned for equality for Black Americans, he was the first Afro-American received PhD degree. He was one of founders of National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and it was synchronous with Harlem Renaissance. This was a time for blacks to fight against white's violence literarily. Of course, some black intellectuals were predecessors to them like Harriet Beecher Stowe with her "Uncle Tom's Cabin". Authors like Langston Hughes (belongs to Lost Generation) draw a vivid vision of Blacks' situation in America; as he versifies:

I'm nobody, who are you?

Are you nobody too?

Then, there is a pair of us

Don't tell you know

They'll banish us

How already to be somebody?

Say your name all day long

Like a frog in the bog.

W.E.B. DuBois's doctoral dissertation was The Suppression of the African Slave-Trade to the United States of America, 1638-1870. As the editor of The Crisis, he encouraged the development of black literature and art and urged his readers to see "Beauty in Black." In deed he and his contemporaries were the literate nonviolent campaigners against white's violence.

Elijah Muhammad and Nation of Islam

"The Negro wants to be everything but himself...He wants to integrate with the white man, but he cannot integrate with himself or with his own kind. The Negro wants to lose his identity because he does not know his own identity."

Elijah Muhammad

Elijah Poole converted to Islam as Elijah Muhammad was founder and leader of the black separatist religious movement known as the Nation of Islam (sometimes called Black Muslims) in the United States. He was famous for his rhetoric directed at white people, whom he called "blue-eyed devils." He challenged white's violence by articulating Islam rulings in Black Americans context and promoted racial unity and self-help and maintained a strict code of discipline among members. During World War II he asked his followers not to attend military service and serve for white's devil whimsical desire. He was jailed for his thoughts and speeches, but being imprisoned he was challenging with white's violence and try to find others to convert them to Islam and enter them to the Nation of Islam. Malcolm X was one of them.

Malcolm X and Black Power

"There is nothing in our book, The Koran, that teaches us to suffer peacefully. Our religion teaches us to be intelligent. Be peaceful, be courteous, obey the law, respect everyone, but, if someone puts his hand on you, send him to the cemetery. That's a good religion."

Malcolm X

Malcolm Little well known as Malcolm X was a black militant leader who articulated concepts of race pride and Black Nationalism in the early 1960s. Primarily he was not a Muslim, but he converted to Islam and became a minister of the Nation of Islam movement being familiar with Elijah Muhammad. He was an exception in this narrative as he believed in violence rather than violence, in deed it's his belief: "I'm nonviolent with those who are nonviolent with me." Whites were violent to him so he was to them as well. This is was the bone of a little contention between him and MLK.

Back Power who were movement formed by American blacks to produce social equality and equal rights and emphasize racial pride; and Black Panthers who were radical underground African American organization that was founded by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale in the mid-1960s and advocated violence to attain liberation and equality for African Americans were largely influenced by his opinions. They were standing for violent campaign in facing of white's violence and mostly Ku Klux Klan. For this belief he sentenced years of his life in prison and actually there he met Elijah Muhammad.

However, after he came back from Hajj pilgrimage and rename himself as el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz, chose a more nonviolent way in his struggle against white's violence. That's why he was assassinated in 1965 by some which there is belief they were Blacks related to Nation of Islam!

Thurgood Marshall and Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka

"The United States has been called the melting pot of the world. But it seems to me that the colored man either missed getting into the pot or he got melted down."

Thurgood Marshall

Thurgood Marshall was the first black member of the U.S. Supreme Court. As an attorney he successfully argued before the U.S. Supreme Court the case of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954), in which racial segregation in American public schools was declared unconstitutional. He's prominent in advancing anti discriminational laws in US judiciary system. His legacy up to now is what Black community benefits form. Before his legacy white's violence even militarily prevented Black students to entering White's school, after it they become motley.

Martin Luther King Jr. and Civil Rights Movements

"Today the choice is no longer between violence and nonviolence.

It is either nonviolence or nonexistence."

MLK

The most famous figure in American Black Community is Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. doubtless. He is an American emblem of Nonviolence. King's nonviolent doctrine was strongly influenced by the teachings of Indian leader Mohandas Gandhi. Unlike the great majority of civil rights activists who have regarded nonviolence as a convenient tactic. King followed Gandhi's principles of pacifism. In King's view, civil rights demonstrators, who were beaten and jailed by hostile whites, through the redemptive character of their unmerited suffering educated and transformed their oppressors. King set about organizing the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), which gave him a base of operation throughout the South, as well as a national platform from which to speak

The Montgomery bus boycott started on December 1, 1955, when Rosa Parks, an African American woman, refused to surrender her bus seat to a white passenger, and as a consequence was arrested for violating the city's segregation law. It was an ignition for chain of nonviolent protests against segregation and racial discrimination. Sit-Ins in Nashville under leadership of James Lawson, nonviolent demonstrations and public speech were usual tactics rendered by Blacks (mostly students) to confront Whites brutality and violence.

King joined other civil rights leaders in organizing the historic March on Washington. On August 28, 1963, an interracial assembly of more than 200,000 gathered peaceably in the shadow of the Lincoln Memorial to demand equal justice for all citizens under the law. It led to Civil Rights Act in coming year.

But these accomplishments were not as easy as ABC; once MLK had said: "I'm frankly tired of marching. I'm tired of going to jail," for every minute reason he had been sued by whites. In 1968 days before living for Memphis he'd asserted: "Living every day under the threat of death, I feel discouraged every now and then and feel my work's in vain, but then the Holy Spirit revives my soul again." He was accurate, on April 4, 1968 he was shot in a Balcony of a hotel in Memphis by a violent white some like to call him James Earl Ray. He sentenced for a century a year after but even Dr. King's family doesn't believe in him as the assassinator.

If so King chose nonviolence and not nonexistence; but "White violence" chose nonexistence for him, even by announcing his birthday as a holyday.

Louise Farrakhan

After Muhammad's death in 1975 another group, retaining both the name and the founding principles of Elijah Muhammad's original Nation of Islam, was established under the leadership of Louis Eugene Wolcott converted to Islam with a new name Louis Farrakhan. He was leader of the New York Temple and the Nation' most prominent spokesman at the time of Elijah Muhammad' death. Although given a national post by Mohammed, Farrakhan disagreed with Mohammed' changes, and in 1978 he left to found a third Nation of Islam.

By the 1990s he had emerged as a prominent African American leader, as demonstrated by the success in 1995 of the Million Man March in Washington, D.C., which he helped to organize. In 1995 Qubilah Shabazz daughter of Malcolm X was accused of plot to assassinate him, but he didn't sue the case. Farrakhan toned down his racial rhetoric and moved the group toward orthodox Islam after a bout with prostate cancer in 2000.

COINTELPRO

During the 1950s and '60s, the bureau used covert means to disrupt the activities of groups it considered subversive and to discredit their leaders; the operations, known as COINTELPRO (counterintelligence programs), were officially discontinued in 1971.

John Edgar Hoover, ex FBI director who was 48 years at office, clarifies the mission of COINTELPRO against nationalist blacks as below:

a. preventing form emergence of a new leader who can unify Blacks.

b. preventing from violence directed by Black nationalist groups

c. preventing from popularizing of Black Nationalist groups and their leaders

d. preventing from rapid growth of Black Nationalist Organizations especially among youth.

e. targets of these operation were: Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Elijah Muhammad and....

Hoover also ordered aggressive surveillance of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., and tried to discredit King by disseminating derogatory information about him to the media, Congress, and others.

Conclusion

It's 2008, to a high extend Blacks and Whites have been melted, even a Black man have nominated himself for American Presidency; but still there is Ku Klux Klan (if so, underground); WASPs are still the superiors amongst nation; guys show "noose" to their Black friends and foes even jokingly and white's violence is still common.

Individualism is a white phenomenon in American mind as volunteerism is; in fact as George Orwell says in Animal Farm: "all are equal but some are more equal" and this is the true meaning of egalitarianism and Human Rights in the States. America is a melting pot, but blacks never considered as edible and thus prevented to enter the pot.

"It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on the cloak of non-violence to cover impotence."

Mahatma Gandhi|The South shall rise again!... in fact, it already has in college football. With about one-third of the nation's population, the South wins college football games and championships in far greater numbers than population alone would suggest. And it's not just the Southeastern Conference (SEC) that dominates the rest of the nation. Southern teams in the ACC, Big 12 and other conferences routinely field superior football teams. Over the last few decades, the South has won national championships in college football twice as often as other regions of the country.

The South is very proud of its football record. During bowl season, the South wants other Southern teams to prove the South's dominance. Other regions of the country still have the top five largest football stadiums, but the South has the next five largest.

The South has risen again, but this time around, things are different. Instead of white supremacy, it's African-American supremacy. Yes, African-Americans dominate college football and other sports out of all proportion to their numbers. African-Americans currently constitute only 12% or 13% of the entire American population, but they are concentrated in the South. The geographic center of this Southern demographic population is the State of Alabama, which has held the National Championship in college football for the last three years.

After integration, the South's football dominance arose. The good news is that, instead of creating racial tension, this dominance improves race relations more than almost anything else in American society.

Unlike baseball and basketball, football is more akin to warfare. Just as in war, football boils down to a territorial dispute. Other sports involve much less hostile physical contact with the enemy and do not always require the entire team for important plays. Each team in football wears armor and has a front facing the enemy. Teams have highly publicized field generals and gladiators. The high command directs from the sidelines. We love to see the enemy outrun, brought down, hit hard and defeated. We football fans get in touch with our inner barbarians. Fans say and do aggressive things at football games that society will not condone elsewhere.

Football gladiators fight and take risks for us, our family and our tribe. Emotional territorial and tribal loyalties are highest in college football. The players fight to protect older, weaker and sedentary members of the tribe, whose fates ride in the bodies of their warriors. We admire those who train hard for war and live athletic lives.

Every now and then, our tribe suffers casualties in the form of injuries. Sometimes players drop dead in football practice. Our worst nightmare is a paralyzing injury to one of our warriors. We accept casualties as part of warfare. Our goal is to win and boost our own status. We love the players who champion our cause. We honor them as indispensable protectors of our tribes and families.

The South has risen again... and this time it's winning.|We should really wonder what is going on with the Department of Homeland Security after reading the "Unclassified" report warning of right-wing extremists. If you will read this document you would have to ask; What Planet are the authors of this document living on?

Indeed, after reading this report myself I found that the authors are more paranoid and misguided than the so-called "white supremacy" groups or any right-wing extremist I've ever met in all my travels. Not only that, there are so many factual errors in this document from the Department of Homeland Security that I do not believe anyone ought to take it seriously.

Further, professional psychological evaluation needs to be administered to its authors, who obviously have never read the Constitution of the United States of America, as they clearly do not understand how this great nation came to be or why it is so great. In one part of the document the authors of this report state:

"Rightwing extremist paranoia of foreign regimes could escalate or be magnified in the event of an economic crisis or military confrontation. . .The dynamics in 2009 are somewhat similar, as other countries, including China, India, and Russia, as well as some smaller, oil-producing states, are experiencing a rise in economic power and influence."

What on Earth are they talking about? Obviously, the writers of this document know nothing of Geo-Politics or World Economics, as Russia is tanked and any nation that exports oil right now for the mainstay of their economic strength is on the verge of collapse, here in 2009. China has come back significantly since its decade long year over year 10% economic expansion.

The companies in India that allowed the US companies to outsource seem to have been faking their profitability. And although this is merely one example of blatant errors in this DHS report, it shows just how ridiculous it is. In fact, if anything, we ought to fear the DHS, not as a problem with freedom or conservatives, but rather in their complete and utter incompetence in protecting us.

Because if this is the type of nonsense that they are basing their strategic planning on, well, then no one in America is safe. And on the purported "Right-Wing Extremists" using these issues to recruit people into "homegrown terrorists" cells is really stretching and shows that the paranoia is not with right-wingers, but at the DHS itself. I am not amused, and would like to know who in hell is running this organization anyway?|The most effective and long-term solution to weight loss is through diet and exercise. With these two things finely tuned and working together, then weight loss is most definitely achievable. There is no one super food which will help rid you of fat, just like there is no one piece of exercise equipment which will create the perfect body. The answer to success is within variety of both diet and exercise. Just like there are specific exercises and routines to lose weight, there are certain foods which have excellent fat burning properties.

The secret to maintaining your diet is to keep it varied and to keep it controlled. You must know what you are eating and which foods are your weaknesses. It is easy to become bored of what you eat, if you eat a narrow choice of foods, just because you think that is the only way to lose weight. The secret to success is to introduce a variety of different foods, in different combinations all with health and fat burning benefits. Here are the top ten fat burning foods to get into your diet.

1. Green Tea. Green tea is caffeine free and is excellent for quenching your thirst without the caffeine overload. The high levels of antioxidants work with the body to help increase its fat burning potential. It is sugar-free and additive free so it is an all-round healthy beverage to consume.

2. Whole grain bread. The benefit of eating this type of bread over white breads is that the whole of the wheat kernel is used to make the bread. This means it is loaded with vitamins and minerals but more important for weight loss, it is loaded with fibre. Fibre is very important to help stay fuller for longer and will help control cravings. Make sure you choose whole grain bread and not just brown bread.

3. Fish - especially Salmon. This is a super-food when it comes to weight loss and it owes it all to its high levels of Omega oils. These types of fats are amazing at regulating body fat storage and helping increase metabolism which will help you burn fat and lose weight much more effectively. It is also high in protein which is perfect for fuelling muscles and helping to control weight.

4. Broccoli. This is regarded as one of the famous power foods and this is based on its nutritional supremacy and low-calorie content. There is a large amount of fibre and a healthy helping of Vitamin C, iron and Vitamin A.

5. Garlic and Onions. These are a smelly but great way to boost your immune system, increase your fibre intake and increase your blood flow. This will mean that these two types of fat burning foods will help break down fat and increase your metabolism.

6. Yoghurt. This is a high protein food, which means it will keep you fuller for longer. It is simple to use in whichever meal you want it to be in and it is relatively cheap to buy, making it a cheap fat burning power food.

7. Oranges. Oranges contain the powerful antioxidant, Vitamin C. This is a great boost for your immune system but it also increases the production of Carnitine, which in turn increases the breakdown of fats in our bodies.

8. Berries. These are again high in antioxidants and you can combine them with yoghurt to make a power meal to help boost your metabolism and increase your fat loss progress.

9. Lean, low-fat Chicken. This is a high protein, low-fat power food and will help keep you full, fuel your workouts and will help control your fat levels.

10. Brown rice. This again, like whole meal bread, is made using the whole of the wheat kernel.|In spite of a severe scarcity of cars in June 2011, Toyota remains the evident market leader, in the midst of 85,100 sales and in excess of 22,500, prior to its close competitor.

Toyota stated May and June deals had been considerably influenced by manufacturing troubles caused by the destructive earthquake as well as tsunami in Japan. But, manufacturing has returned to usual in Australia, Thailand and Japan - the three countries that supply cars for the home market. Toyota has a very big piece of market share of automobile industry and all cars by Toyota are looking great a people love to ride these.

Toyota anticipates getting more or less all the automobiles that were structured previously in the year, offering consumers with a wider option of models, ratings and shades.

Next to August, the amount of vehicles accessible at Toyota dealerships will be back to usual - an amazing turnaround.

Toyota also expressed gratitude towards its consumers, for being considerate over the past months.

In June, Hilux was one of the best-selling cars in the nation with over 3,000 sales whereas Toyota Corolla topped 2,100 sales and Toyota Camry, kept hold of its supremacy of the medium-car division.

Toyota's Corolla has made a hat-trick as Australia's best-selling car for all of the past three months. Latest sales figures released revealed a January record for Corolla, which was the single vehicle to top 4,000 sales for the month. Ever since the beginning of November 2010, Australians have purchased over 13,500 Corolla sedans and hatches. This is over 3,300 ahead of any other car - representing its appeal as trendy, reasonable, fuel-efficient and dependable motoring.

The new Toyota Corolla ascent special version is obtainable as a hatchback only, with the option of manual or mechanical transmission.

The admired Toyota car is also Australia's best-selling car for the initial seven months of the fiscal year that began last July. Its recognition, particularly amongst private customers, assisted in driving the company to its 70th successive, as market leader in January - a continuous run dating back to April 2005.

Except Corolla, Toyota's other segment cream of the crop for January were Camry (mid-size cars), RAV4 (compact SUVs), LandCruiser Prado (medium SUVs), Land Cruiser 200 Series (large SUVs), HiLux (4x2 light trucks) and HiAce Commuter (bus).

Finally, Toyota Australia has declared the release of the Toyota Aurion White Limited Edition model. The vehicle is derived from the Aurion wonder; however it features over $3000 more add-ons.|Powerful universal themes in fiction usually remain undiscerned by the author until he or she comes to look over the manuscript of the novel for a substantive edit. Story is all about people interacting with each other, and how they handle their conflicting desires. The theme can often be within the unconscious of the author, and therefore not something you can contrive when you set out to plan your novel.

An alternative way of expressing "theme" is "controlling idea". As Robert McKee says in his book Story, "the more beautifully you shape your work around" this theme or controlling idea, "the more meanings audiences will discover" in your work as "they take your idea and follow its implications into every aspect of their lives."

Examples of powerful universal themes are: spiritual searching, emotional needs, unfulfilled dreams, a thirst for truth, craving for intimacy, fear of death, lust for power.

A reader need never define the theme consciously in order to respond to it within a novel. We recognise a powerful story when it takes hold of us. The curious thing about themes is that very often different people can come up with very different ways of identifying the themes in a work of fiction. This again is an indication of the greatness of a novel. And then of course the identification of themes in great literature can be an arduous task for schoolchildren and English Literature GCSE students; and this very task can sometimes be responsible for putting them off the novels in question. A survey of some of my favourite novels of all time comes up with these themes:

Joseph Conrad: Heart of Darkness - conflict between reality and darkness

Graham Greene: The End of the Affair - hatred of self; love and hate of God

Charlotte Bronte: Jane Eyre - clash between conscience and passion; search for sense of belonging & love

Emily Bronte: Wuthering Heights - nature against civilisation; revenge and repetition; love and passion

Jane Austen: Pride and Prejudice - love, reputatation and class

Charles Dickens: Great Expectations - crime, social class, ambition

Thomas Hardy: Far From the Madding Crowd - unrequited love

Dostoyevsky: Crime and Punishment - alienation from society

Oscar Wilde: The Portrait of Dorian Gray - aestheticisim versus duplicity; supremacy of youth and beauty

Wilkie Collins: The Woman in White - substituted identity

JRR Tolkien: The Lord of the Rings - the corrupting nature of power; death and immortality; self-sacrifice

Each one of these novels have several other themes as well. The universality of these themes is what makes these novels classic.

I believe authors achieve this kind of power in their stories by working with the limited freedom of movement in their own lives and trusting themselves to the unconscious.

SC Skillman|The 2008 US election was a victory for America beyond the breakthroughs made for global racial and gender equality. In that election, the America people chose the new frontier of breaking through global glass ceilings to address an unprecedented worldwide financial crisis. Slightly more than half the population took that chance on a radically new and untried approach rather than clinging to the conservative status quo obviously not working.

The wisdom of the choice was instantly evident as a dynamic young president began reversing regressive American policies. A young family and energetic children took the place of a secretive couple in the White House. A playground, garden, White House puppy and an air of informality proclaimed America's emergence into a global-friendly mode. The new President and his first lady were superstars on their first overseas trip in the traditional testing ground of the first "100 days" of a new presidency.

Yet despite all that dramatic progress for America's recovery from eight disastrous years, the economy continued to stagnate, in large part due to continued decline of retail sales and producer prices, as reported by Bloomberg News on April 14. The President's eloquent and convincing assurances, along with those of the Federal Reserve Chairman, simply did not take effect on the American people who had elected the western industrialized world's first non-white President believed capable of tackling the economic crisis.

From the first days of the transition and even before the inauguration, the new President had stated his intention to go forward rather than look back. That noble attitude, akin to the Christian tenet of "turning the other cheek," would be a high ideal for the country were it not for the psychological reality. Radical changes needed to be reconciled in order to move forward, whether on the personal, national or global level.

The new administration in Washington during the 2008 transition could not have been more different from the old. The backbone of white supremacy was cracked. Humanism and openness replaced preemptive aggression as a policy. Regulation and social responsibility took precedence over unregulated profit, at least in theory. Yet the unresolved monumental discrepancy between two successive administrations handicapped the country's recovery.

The economic crisis that prompted America to take a revolutionary step in the election of their leader in 2008 was an outcome of an eight-year set of policies put in place by an administration whose adherents were among the near half of the country who had voted to continue on that path. Undeterred, the supporters of that conservative view on how America should go forward in the world continued the pursuit of their aims during the transition. Working under the radar, with America's eyes distracted by novelty, conservatives confidently worked the status quo agenda with a view toward future elections.

America's ex-vice president went on record to state that America's new cooperative approach to the world was endangering the country rather than making it safer. America's ex-president kept mum about the new President even as he inaugurated the Policy Institute that would continue to promote the policies that had led America to be despised by the world under his tenure. The conservative ex-vice-presidential candidate continued her bid for a presidential run in the next election despite personal scandals. Conservative pundits called for America to "take back our country," as did the radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh at the Conservative Political Action Conference, as reported by CNN.com on March 1.

America made history with its 2008 election, in which the American people proved the agility of their democratic system through a radical response to a crisis. Yet America's first non-white President was a brilliant half-white Harvard graduate. Status quo white ways were undoubtedly no strangers to him. His brilliance lay in large part on having negotiated them and on knowing which boundaries needed to be respected for effectiveness in a white dominated world.

That brilliant half-white man, however, became President of the United States with the 2008 election. With that mandate, he assumed responsibility for the psychological well-being of the country. He took on the job of reconciling his administration's policies with those of the previous eight years. He could no longer afford the safe non-white course of "appeasement" in carrying out his mandate.

Puppies, new American designers and a relaxed atmosphere in the Oval Office were all innovations America needed to see in its struggle to cope with the continuing financial crisis that had led to the election of the western industrialized world's first non-white leader. But the continuity of the humane legacy America had chosen with the election depended on reconciliation of contrasts in two radically different succeeding administrations.

For that process to take place, America's charismatic new non-white leader needed to fully attain his office. He needed to move beyond popularity, celebrity and appeasement. He needed to shed light on wrongdoing in America's past so as to prevent a relapse in the next election.|Herbalife International is a world-renowned company famous for its products. It specializes in global nutrition, weight loss, weight gain and skin care products and goods. It is a wide scale company that has thousands of employees, retailers and wholesalers situated in various parts of the globe including the United States, United Kingdom, South Korea, Japan and Australia. In fact, in the year 2009 in acquired a huge amount of income amounting to 2.3 billion U.S. dollars, making it one of the most promising companies exhibiting huge recovery ever since the global financial crisis that struck the whole world a couple of years back.

Herbalife is famous for having distributors in different countries. These distributors may come in a small, medium or large scale or scope. Almost all of the past, current and future products are also being sold by these distributors. It is like buying from the Company itself if you buy from these distributors. These distributors also use marketing techniques like flyers, newspaper advertisements, social networking marketing and internet marketing in order to further promote products and goods. If you are one of these distributors then you may want to take advantage of article marketing, a form of marketing using articles written in order to promote Herbalife and its products, goods and services that you are currently selling.

The articles must be able to adequately promote the products that you selling. Each article must focus on only one particular product. You must be able to outline the advantages of the product in about 500 words or less. Having more than 500 words will cause boredom for most potential customers or clients and thus not recommended. The article must be short, brief and concise but at the same time, it must also be complete. The gist here is you must avoid beating around the bush when promoting your Herbalife product.

Each benefit of your product can be expounded in two to three sentences. You can even compare it to other products of the same line, expounding on its supremacy over such product. You can also discuss about the price of the product in question, stating its affordability when compared to products from other companies. You can also include promos and discounts in order to entice potential clients or customers to buy your more of your Herbalife product. Make sure that each article is written with the highest quality possible, with zero grammatical errors and punctuation errors in order for other people to understand it better.

You must outline your article using the introduction, body and summary outline. You first introduce the name of the product that you are marketing. You can provide a website link or URL for the reader to visit in this part. You then state each of the benefits and advantages of the said product in the body of the article. You can use bullets instead of paragraphs depending on your preference. Finally, you use the last paragraph of your article in order to summarize your product as a whole. Do not forget to include the price and the website or store where your customer or client can buy the said product.|I stood on the shore, gazing out towards the distant horizon where a flock of birds flew in perfect formation. How beautiful that they were so synchronised and in tune with one another, without a single word being spoken. "Poetry in motion" was the term that came to mind.

I could feel the soft sand squeezing between my toes as I tentatively dipped my feet into the water of the little rock pool. Small fish darted away to hide under a rock at my sudden approach. I thought how I had done the same on occasion when something, or someone, had startled me from my quiet reveries. At times, it seems we are not so different from the animal world that quietly surrounds us. I wonder whether they also sit in quiet contemplation and wonder at the marvel that is life.

Surely there can be few such lovely moments as this, wading through the tepid water that lapped my knees like a faithful hound, watching the ripples slowing spreading in an ever-increasing circle all around me. This is how my energy and aura must look if I could see it. How beautiful we human beings must be if we could see one another simply as light emissions, like walking rainbows.

Imagine our auras melding and merging as we pass one another in the street, like tie-died garments with brilliant colours flowing one into the other. Like swathes of gorgeous jewel coloured silk floating in the breeze on a wash line, with a backdrop of azure blue sky and puffy white clouds. Aah but the beauty of nature would overshadow all our peacock splendour if we would but take the time to admire her gentle vistas, or gaze upon her majestic heights.

How splendid to know that we are an integral part of all this magnificence, a tiny infinitesimal part, but an integral part none-the-less, of all of life itself on this planet we call home. Home? A strange concept to one who has moved around so much. Why confine the idea of home to one small box in one small corner of the world. Why not claim the whole of the earth as home and share it openly and lovingly with everyone we come into contact with. Why this need for supremacy and ownership. One cannot own something that is already a part of who we are, it's not outside us, or around us....its inside us. We are not separate from this living, breathing being that is the earth.

As a tiny speck of dust, we may have floated through time and space to finally find a temporary resting place here on this green and blue planet, just like migrating birds, but even so, there is no separation. All that we are, all that we have ever been, all that we ever will be came from the same infinite source. The light.

We are divine beings of light, created with unconditional love, for the purpose of allowing source to experience the ebb and flow of life and emotions, feelings and humanness. In this humbled state we may be infinitesimal specks of space dust, but we are all a part of that divine source, that sacredness, that unconditional love that is The Great Creator.

In the field of infinite possibilities, we are limitless, pure, wondrous and magnificent. Our potential is endless, without boundaries, should we but allow ourselves to believe it is so. It is so! Believe! For just as the Great Creator designed all that is, so were we also designed as a part of all that is. We are spiritual beings for this brief moment in linear time having a human experience...but soon we will return to our true home, whence we came, back to source and light and divine unconditional love.

And so it is.|In the early 1890s there were a lot of explorers, hunters and fortune hunter who left their homelands in Britain, France, and Germany in search of a brighter future for themselves and their families. These groups landed in South Africa and decided to move north. One such group called the British South Africa Company crossed the Limpopo River and found a land rich in minerals, wildlife and open lands ideal for agriculture. They set up camp and using rifles and other weapons fought against the indigenous people they found there. They wanted the land for themselves! They set about giving each other pieces of land and decided to farm there using the local people as cheap labour. They were led by a man called Cecil John Rhodes. They decided to form government and called their "new" country Rhodesia.

A constitution which favoured the white supremacy was formulated in 1961. This gave all the power to the few whites, and discriminated against the majority, local black people who they had found there. They used them as cheap labour for their farms and mining operations. However, they had to trade with other countries; they were not recognised as a country by United Kingdom and other major powers of the day. Their only ally was South Africa.

In 1965, the political party Rhodesia Front under Ian Douglas Smith declared the country a sovereign independent state! Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI). The United Kingdom and the United Nations lobbied sanctions against this new government but due to the vast wealth of the country's natural reserves the country prospered. There were schools, hospitals, industries and lots of agricultural produce. The country was heaven except there was discrimination against the local black people. No blacks were in white schools, no blacks in white hospitals, no blacks in white residential areas (except as domestic servants and garden -boys!)

This enraged the black man - their country had been stolen from them and they were ill-treated in their own country! In 1961 ZAPU was formed under Joshua Nkomo (a Ndebele man!). All blacks rallied behind it and it was banned by the whites in 1962. It did not stop activities but it went underground. Secret meetings were held in every black township. In 1963 ZANU - a new political party was formed under Reverend Ndabaningi Sithole - a man from the Manicaland region of the country! (Robert Gabriel Mugabe was a member of the new committee) and this party was chiefly a Shona people's party! There were 3 pronged fights - against the two black parties and also against the white regime! ZANU was banned in 1964.There were house raids from the different parties - people had to resort to having membership cards from both parties as failure to produce a membership card often resulted in being beaten up.

The black man's struggle escalated and many people left for either Zambia or Mozambique, the party leaders were arrested, among them Robert Mugabe (imprisoned 1964 - 1974). The black man decided to engage in guerrilla warfare against the white regime!

In 1971 the British government tried to agree with Rhodesia government for an end to sanctions in exchange for a smooth transition to black majority rule! Two clergymen - Bishop Abel Tendekayi Muzorewa and Reverend Canaan Banana led an opposition to this move and formed a new initiative - United African National Council and the two exiled parties (ZAPU under Joshua Nkomo and ZANU under Reverend Sithole) brought themselves under this council! At this stage the initiative was just a forum and not a political party. It therefore was legal! It opposed violence and therefore had the support of the white government. However, when Abel Muzorewa transformed this into a party the members had their doubts and in-fighting began.

Meanwhile not all was OK in the ZANU party - leadership wrangles had started and this led to a split in the party. One faction became ZANU-PF (Patriotic Front) and the other ZANU (Ndonga - after its symbol of a knobkerrie)

On 3 March 1978 an agreement was signed in Harare (then Salisbury) between Muzorewa, Sithole, Jeremiah Chirau and Ian Smith which paved the way for an interim government with the signatories as an Executive Council, to run the affairs of the state in preparation for a general election with black men voting for the first time. However it still had a racial bias as it reserved some seats on racial lines - 10 in the Senate, 28 in parliament and a quarter of the cabinet positions! A predominantly white referendum voted for this constitution!

There were elections and as blacks had no other black party to vote for, and were a majority, UANC won! A new nation was born - Zimbabwe Rhodesia, with Josiah Gumede as president (non -executive - remember Clifford Dupont? and John Wrathall?) and Abel Muzorewa as Prime Minister! This did not go down well with the old guard - Joshua Nkomo (and ZAPU) and Robert Mugabe (with ZANU) and the guerrilla war intensified. International recognition did not come either as these two strong parties had not been involved in the elections! The plans to end the civil war had not worked.

A solution had to be found to end the civil war! Once again the British government took the initiative and called for talks in London with all parties involved. ZAPU and ZANU decided to attend under a common banner - Patriotic Front! The Lancaster House talks took place from September to December 1979, punctuated with lots of disagreements and threats to break down. The land issue was the main bone of contention. The then British foreign Secretary - Lord Carrington presided. It was agreed to hold fresh elections in early 1980.

These elections took place at the end of February 1980 and there was a lot of intimidation, violence and threats to the continuance of the war if ZANU-PF lost. People were tired of the war and guess who won - ZANU-PF! The UANC won 3 seats out of the 80 - reserved for blacks. A new nation was born - Republic of Zimbabwe! With Robert Mugabe as Prime Minister and Canaan Banana as President!}}