• About
  • Activism/Initiatives
  • Contact Us
  • Mission Statement

~ A Blog of the African Diaspora

Monthly Archives: March 2009

DIY Bracketology

31 Tuesday Mar 2009

Posted by I. Langalibalele in Banks, Barack Obama, Business, Economics, Iskandar Langalibalele, Stimulus Package, Wallstreet Bailout

≈ 2 Comments

Your Economic Stimulus Plan

Now that March Madness is almost over, the bracketologists will have to wait nearly another year to put their theories and guesswork to the test. However, the school of bracketology must be expanded. It can be applied to any number of categories where guesswork and theories might be the order of the day. So I am going to attempt a “bracketology” of the economic stimulus plan, which will breakdown exactly who gets what and for how much most folks will sell out before we get down to the “final four”.

Our brackets should look something like the following:

stimulus-bracket-11

In this sport, $800 billion to $1 trillion in cold, hard government cash is at stake. Also at stake is Social Security, social programs and a host of social services. Now this game is played according very strict rules. First, no limit exists as to the number of players a team can enter into the game. For instance, the workers have 130 million members, and they can all participate. This seems to give them an enormous advantage.

Don’t forget the second rule. When the whistle starts, teams must start lobbying. You lobby by cornering a congressman or senator and getting your point across on behalf of your team. In this game, billions of dollars are at stake. So not only must your team mates corner as many representatives as possible, they also should wine and dine them, preferably at ritzy strip bars.

Of course, you can do your own “bracketology” and become your own expert. Follow the money! Find out who will be the losers and winners in this great sport, where so many folks don’t even kno they are players! Are you a player? Find out in your next rebate check, or see if you have an increase in your food stamps like I got. Yeeaay! Party, like it’s 1999.

10 Things I Noticed in the Black Hair Salon

31 Tuesday Mar 2009

Posted by aulelia in Black Women in Europe

≈ 18 Comments

Tags

Black Hair, Natural Hair

Last weekend, I went with a close friend of mine at a hair salon in east London. My friend was getting a weave done, however, just sitting with her was such a ripe opportunity for me to observe how some black women act within the space of the hair salon.

10. The sharp smell of smoke that was piping out of one patron’s head as she sat underneath the dryer! I never noticed how thick the plumes of smoke can get.

9. How the rattail combs poke in and out of people’s heads as they undo their braids underneath their long weaves.

8. The stitching together of weaves could be a metaphor of how we need to stick together as black people. Continue reading →

Send It To Me Right & On Time

31 Tuesday Mar 2009

Posted by Tafari in Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

brown out, CNN, diversity, News, roland martin, you gotta do better

Tonight after class, I was winding down my evening and catching up on email when I got a tacky press release from Turner-Time/Warner. The message came around 9:11pm, and it was a notification of Roland Martin taking over Campbell Brown’s (on maternity leave) spot on CNN’s “No Bias, No Bull” program.

First off, why the day late & dollar short notice? Why not notify days before? Second, why did I have to hear this news hours earlier from Farai Chideya via Twitter?

I was so put off by the email notice that I responded back by asking “why are you informing bloggers so late after his first appearance & why is this release in all caps?” I wonder If I will hear back.

After I got past my issues with the communiqué, I joked to myself “D.L. “the fool” Hughley out, Roland Martin in (temporarily).” Hmmmm!

With all this said, I’m happy for Martin getting his shine on, but why is that CNN cannot offer more diversity after 4pm. CNN has a virtual brown out in terms of a minority presence during weekday evenings. Well I guess maybe I should not complain about CNN’s diversity because they do have a female anchor (CB), 2 senior citizens (LD & LK) and a gay man (AC). Diverse? Yes! All white? Yes! Occasional Negro presence? Yes! Makes me compelled to watch” No!

After the election, CNN went back to the ole okie doke when it was the darkest network on cable during the 2008 election cycle; now, not so much. Yeah, they gave us D.L., but that was giving us shit. We deserve more, we have a Black president bitch. We don’t need a coon offering a raunchy brand of edutainment.

I think I sound a little bitter here & at the end of the day, my thoughts don’t matter in the big picture. Mainstream media will never end their bait & switch tactics.

I’m just saying!

2nd Anniversary of the AfroSpear

30 Monday Mar 2009

Posted by asabagna in AfroSpear, AfroSphere, Black History, Critical Thinking, Culture, Leadership, Life, Love

≈ 11 Comments

“Field is celebrating his one year anniversary as a blogger. He mused how black conversatives have their own network thang together, but apparently, black progressives don’t. This is important.

We are the ones who will vision the future. Conservatives, by definition, are reformist, they want to preserve the system/status quo. They want their lil negro cut of the pie, even if it is arsenic for the rest of us and the Planet.

How can we use our brains and voices to create what is wholly absent: a black progressive movement?

I know I can complain and point out racism’s finer points fairly well; where is that getting us and me? Is our race in crisis or what? Has the prison-industrial complex collapsed and I missed it? The plantation in 2007 is in the prisonyard – ya’ll realize that prisons are doing more business on the inside than Eli Whitney!

Its like the prison guard in Slam: “They are wiping out our race…and you’re sitting around here playing these silly-ass games.”

The ‘AfroSphere’ (Asabagna’s invention) must become an Afro-Spear, carving a path for our people into this 21st Century.

Black Progressive Blogger Organizing Conference anyone?”
thefreeslave 30th March 2007

So began the journey of the AfroSpear, conceived two years ago on this date. Three days later, we had our first post on this blog. I missed recognizing the first anniversary last year, so I made it a point to remember to acknowledge it this year.

The whole process and journey has been fulfilling and eye-opening. No doubt at times it has been “trying”, especially coming up against those who’s primary objective was to cause dissention among us and destroy the vision of the AfroSpear. Ironically, in their own way they inspired us to keep doing what we were doing. But this is not about them and as my brother thefreeslave recently stated: “I ain’t mad at yah!”

I need to acknowledge and give mad props and love to a number of people, who without their efforts, this would never have happened… nor continued to today.

First and foremost, to the other original five members who took the idea of the AfroSpear and started this blog: Sylvia, Aulelia, Kizzie, thefreeslave and the Field Negro. Special props to Sylvia, who did a lot to get this blog and the vision of the AfroSpear rolling. She scripted the “Mission Statement” and started the googlegroup as a forum for those in the AfroSphere who wanted to be a part of the AfroSpear vision.

I need to also acknowledge the contributions of Tafari (we still need you man), Lovebabz and Belizebound to this blog. There are also those who supported and encouraged us through the good and bad times, as well as those who support and encourage us today. A sincere “thank you all”, especially to Angie (Nuvision), Ensayn Reality, Wayne (Electronic Village) and Desire Katihabwa. 

Lastly, I need to give a hug, dap, kiss and heart felt “thank you”, to the current contributors who are keeping the vision and this blog alive: Adrianne, Aulelia, Brotherpeacemaker, Lubangakene (aka thefreeslave, aka Julian), Ishkandar Langalibalele and Nkawzi N. Mhango. A special appreciation to Adrianne and Brotherpeacemaker, who encouraged me to keep the blog going when I was seriously considering shutting it down at the beginning of this year. You were right… in it’s own way, this little forum has relevance and provides inspiration throughout the AfroSphere. AND IT’S GROWING! 

We are still humbly a work in progress… and for me it’s still a labour of love. Hopefully Lubangakene… someday we will host an AfroSpear conference.

Happy 2nd anniversary AfroSpear!

Discernment Poem #48

30 Monday Mar 2009

Posted by Maxjulian in Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

The hip-nosis: Analysis nonsensical paralysis negritude nullified by a new world order POTUS rippin’ the fraudulent mike, puttin’ a sleeper hold on the people’s domepiece.

The spirit: DOA from too little R-E-A-D-I-N-G, R-E-A-S-O-N-I-N-G in Tut’s tomb, your inner catacombs.

Ali told Frazier that he would see all that his eyes would allow him to see.

Why can’t your no ‘count eyes see behind the beige, colored boy curtain?

The forest-green Courvoisier keeps hitting some of us upside the head with its 100 proof trees and ‘a thousand too many’ highs.

Remove the red, black and green blindfold, African.

Back the ‘F’ up.

Enter the Dragon.

“Don’t think – FEEL!”

“Hurt muthafucka, HURT!!”

Who gets the money from Black Jesus?!

Show me the money and I’ll show you a con man, flim flam, heavyweight champiAN, hoodwinking the racially hoodwinkable, skin deep, scam sleep, paradigm prisoners.

You say be patient and I say I told you so.

Stevie said “You haven’t done nuthin.”

I say, “you haven’t got nothing,” nothing to show for your logical fallacy, race loyalty, cranial self-lobotomy.

Stop being an intellectual panhandler.

Find the truth and the kingdom within.

Photo of the Day

26 Thursday Mar 2009

Posted by asabagna in AfroSpear, AfroSphere, Humour, Life

≈ 2 Comments

White Supremacy, Imperialism and Fascism in America

26 Thursday Mar 2009

Posted by I. Langalibalele in African-Americans, Banks, Business, Capitalism, Conservatism, Critical Thinking, Economics, Europe, Fascism, Genocide, Globalization, History, Imperialism, Iskandar Langalibalele, Liberalism, Pan Africanism, Racism, racist exploitation, Republicans, Socialism, United States, Wallstreet Bailout, Work

≈ 1 Comment

Breaking down the concentrated class struggle

Right now US society needs a clear understanding of the difference between socialism and fascism because a war is being waged against working class people. Americans fail to understand the class basis of the State. They also have a difficulty in making comparative analyses between the US brand of bourgeois democracy and other types. Imperialism and fascism are not such very different systems. US society presently faces a neo-fascist “dictatorship”.

First of all, socialism is a revolutionary social system. It is born out of revolt, uprisings and insurrection. It is a bottom up society and a system created to wither away; that is, socialism is not a society which has a long-term future. It will be transformed into a society where revolutions, uprisings and insurrections are unnecessary.

Socialism, like the society which must succeed it, will transform the means of distribution so that all the resources of society will be available to its members. The State must operate as the primary instrument for socialized distribution of resources — to contrast with capitalist privatization of collectively produced wealth — but not as the sole force for this activity.

Socialist democracy means working class democracy. This is the logic of democratic struggle. Once the laboring masses eradicate the degenerate notion of racist supremacy, the democratic political process must take on a more principled character. America thrives on the practice of racist supremacy, pure and simple.

Never has this been more apparent than the racist resurgence rising to challenge President Obama’s tenure in office. From Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio voicing his admiration for the Ku Klux Klan to the police summarily executing Oscar Grant on a BART station platform, these examples of racist reaction raising its hydra head have to meet forceful, unbreaking resistance from our community.

Racism shapes the culture of the colonizer society, and deforms the culture of the oppressed. It is, in reality, an expression of class warfare. As such, racism designates one nationality as a master race and the others as servants or slave races, a so-called underclass. These ideas, inculcated thru out colonialism, set the standards for interactions between workers of different nationalities. Workers from the white society think of themselves as superior to blacks, Latinos, American Indians, and Asians. Even government census forms convey a false sense of race purity.

The government bail out of the bloodsucking banks, tho, will deepen the merger of international finance capitalism with the State, which is the very definition of fascism. Capitalism is comprised of concentration of wealth into as few hands as possible. Imperialism constitutes capitalism’s merger of finance with the corporations to create an international finance system. So because of what is taking place today, with the State giving massive amounts of money to the Wall Street bankers, this is the end-game in the Milton Friedman economic model first advocated by Ronald Reagan, also known as voodoo economics.

Barack Obama seems to deepen this trend of reducing US white workers to colonized status, while the neo-cons continue to inflame racist sentiments. This struggle reflects the historical lag between bourgeois ideology and working class self-realization or, on the opposite hand, white workers reaction. Until that gap gets closed, the colonized masses must remain in a defensive posture against their white working class comrades on the other side of the skirmish line.

Continue reading →

The State and Imperialism

25 Wednesday Mar 2009

Posted by I. Langalibalele in Banks, Barack Obama, Business, Capitalism, Conservatism, Corruption, Critical Thinking, Economics, Europe, Fascism, Genocide, Geopolitics, Globalization, History, Holocaust, Imperialism, Iskandar Langalibalele, Law, Leadership, Liberalism, Politics, Racism, United States

≈ 3 Comments

What is going on with President Barack Obama’s economic stimulus plan? If we can take the word of economists like Paul Krugman and others, the government needs to wait out this period of “financial crisis” because it will stabilize over the next nine months or so. However, Obama continues to push for the so-called bank bail outs, which are nothing more than massive giveaways to the already filthy rich financial sector.

The US government want absolute authority. It seeks absolute authority under the cover of democracy to carry out the most inhuman agenda in history. It wants the ability to implement its agenda under the cover of law, based upon the assumption that elected lawmakers can pass legislation that supports the most extreme goals of international finance.

This is apparent from watching trends over the last thirty years. Over this period, leaders from Reagan on thru Obama have raped public assets to fill the pockets of international bankers and other corporate financiers. In the effort to strip down the State to its basic, fundamental character, US presidents have auctioned off, sold, or outright given the banks trillions of dollars. They have used the excuse that there is a banking crisis. Simultaneously, the banks line their pockets, the pockets of their investors, and buy up other financing assets.

If the bankers were operating honestly, the banks would never have sunk. It is because of their rapine greed and thirst for power that the banks have collapsed. It is not because credit has dried up, but because so much money has become concentrated in so few hands that this situation exists.

Anytime real wages have not kept pace with inflation, anytime the US worker labors for more hours than his counterpart in other industrial workers, anytime that worker has to go into debt to maintain a house, automobile and the simple thing in life, that is because cash has dried up on the street. It has dried up because the financiers have concentrated 80% of it in their own hands. Seven or eight percent of all people control 80% of all the money. Which means that the remaining 83% of the population must fight over the remaining dollars.

So while Obama has joked about bailing out the auto industry, he continues to push the argument that society cannot survive without the banks. But the auto industry produces a product. The banks do not. Paper money is not a product with any intrinsic value whatsoever.

Why is the State giving even more money to the banks, when the government owes the banks over $10 trillion? The State can seize the banks and liquidate the debt. That makes more sense.

That is what the State did with the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. It wanted to control the oil and the opium, so it invaded those countries. Seventy-five percent of Iraqi oil ends up on the black market; opium production has skyrocketed since the US occupation of Afghanistan. The dope ends up here. Profits from the blackmarket oil ends up in the hands of the CIA and the international financiers. These monies are used to destabilize governments and societies, including US society.

However, the State wants to strip away all the benefits US workers have provided for this society. The State wants to strip down Social Security, pensions, health care and transform this country into a backwater of reaction. It can only achieve this by supporting the banks. In doing so, the strategy has been to give away public sector assets from cash grants to public lands.

The international financiers control the most reactionary sector of capitalism. They fuel wars all over the globe. They finance wars, they finance coups d’etat, they finance assassinations of men like Salvador Allende and Maurice Bishop. They want to transform revolutionary Cuba into a whorehouse and a den of vice. They want the world for their playground while creating misery and instability for billions of people in every single country.

The United States is rapidly moving towards fascism. It is repeating all the steps and turns that Germany and Italia made in the years preceding World War II. The marginalized right-wing has become more shrill and obstructionist, and the Obama Administration appears like the Weimar Republic, granting concessions to the enemies of the people, international finance. If this trend continues, in four more years there will be a firestorm in this country. You kno where this leaves African people. People need to take to the streets today.  We do not have time to wait.

← Older posts

Select language then Translate

Subscribe via Email

Subscribe to Afro Spear by Email

Subscribe via Feed

Subscribe in a reader

Recent Posts

  • U.S. District Court Judge Carlton W. Reeves Sentencing Speech to Convicted White Racist Murderers
  • Hands Up, Don’t Shoot!
  • Cornel West on BBC HARDtalk
  • The Whiteness Project
  • Cornel West: “President Obama Doesn’t Belong on Any Shirt with Martin Luther King and Malcolm X”

Recent Comments

productreview on Caster Semenya determined to b…
Dawnatilla TheHun on “Why don’t Dictato…
Briana on Stuff Black People Like…
David Rohrig on When Will America Take Respons…
Mama Ayaba on Dr. Frances Cress Welsing: 12…

AfroSphere

  • Abagond
  • Africa is a country
  • Africa on the blog
  • Africa Portal
  • African Arguments
  • African Executive
  • African Hip Hop
  • AfriClassical Blog
  • Afropean
  • Another Way To View
  • Black Agenda Report
  • Black and Christian
  • Black Women of Brazil
  • Blog Africa
  • Breaking Brown
  • Brotha Wolf
  • ByBlacks – Canadian Black Experience
  • Colorlines
  • Daraja
  • Echwalu Photography
  • Electronic Village
  • Ewuare X. Osayande
  • Field Negro
  • Free Thinking Unabii
  • Global Voices Online
  • Hip Hop Republican
  • Kudzu, Mon Amour
  • Let’s Be Clear
  • Mind of Malaka
  • MsAfropolitan
  • Nana Kofi Acquah
  • NewBlackMan
  • Our Legaci
  • Outhouse Negroes
  • Pambazuka News Blogs
  • Poefrika
  • Project 21
  • Repeating Islands
  • Shawn James
  • Tafari
  • The Blackman Can
  • The Gentlemen's Standard
  • The Intersection of Madness and Reality
  • The Old Black Church
  • The Root Magazine
  • The Silver People Chronicle
  • This is Africa
  • This Is Your Conscience
  • Uhuru News

Site Meter

  • Site Meter

Afrospear Think Tank Blog

Afrospear Think Tank Blog

Copyright & Licence

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence.

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.com

Archives

  • February 2015
  • December 2014
  • October 2014
  • August 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012
  • April 2012
  • March 2012
  • February 2012
  • January 2012
  • December 2011
  • November 2011
  • October 2011
  • September 2011
  • August 2011
  • July 2011
  • June 2011
  • May 2011
  • April 2011
  • March 2011
  • February 2011
  • January 2011
  • December 2010
  • November 2010
  • October 2010
  • September 2010
  • August 2010
  • July 2010
  • June 2010
  • May 2010
  • April 2010
  • March 2010
  • February 2010
  • January 2010
  • December 2009
  • November 2009
  • October 2009
  • September 2009
  • August 2009
  • July 2009
  • June 2009
  • May 2009
  • April 2009
  • March 2009
  • February 2009
  • January 2009
  • December 2008
  • November 2008
  • October 2008
  • September 2008
  • August 2008
  • July 2008
  • June 2008
  • May 2008
  • April 2008
  • March 2008
  • February 2008
  • January 2008
  • December 2007
  • November 2007
  • October 2007
  • September 2007
  • August 2007
  • July 2007
  • June 2007
  • May 2007
  • April 2007

  • Follow Following
    • afrospear.wordpress.com
    • Join 177 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • afrospear.wordpress.com
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...