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http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/dec/22/charging-john-terry-wont-end-racism

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That’s not what I was talking about, but since he brought it up, here is a question you don’t have to answer: Why doesn’t any of these idiots screaming, “If you love your country buy ‘MADE IN USA’” ever get in trouble for preaching protectionism?

And why is it acceptable for liberals foodies to cry, “buy local?”

Funny how we trust me to know what’s good for our American kids at the university but not what is good for my family in Africa.

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I like Serato because of what he said to those underworked and overpaid men and women, whose only problem in life is figuring out how to evade paparazzi.

“I want to feed kids who are starving all over the world,”said Serato, a restauranteur who for six years has fed hungry children in Anaheim, Calif. “But before I do that, I want to feed the children here in America. We should not have hungry children in our own backyard. It is time to do something about it.”

Anyone watching the awards from outside the US might find it difficult to fathom that children in a country that often describes itself as “the greatest nation on Earth” should go hungry. But there are more than 60 million Americans of all races who live in abject poverty. (Add the ones who are in denial and have taken massive debt to perpetuate the dream and the number gets much higher).

Serato’s words reminded me why America reminds me of the things I don’t miss about my father, who died more than a decade ago. When I was a young stallion growing up in the Gusii highlands of southwestern Kenya, we had chickens that laid eggs. But my father would only allow us – his children – to eat eggs only if one broke while we were getting them ready to ship to other people’s children in order to sustain his reputation as a generous man.

Although American philanthropists often feel that they need to save the world outside he US, poverty in America is more devastating than in some so-called developing countries. Before you shout insults at me, let me tell you that — unlike the Anderson Coopers of the world, who parachute to faraway lands and instantly become experts — I have lived in America for 17 years and I spent 20 years in Africa.

Don’t let America’s intricate highways and skyscrapers fool you. In America you can go hungry, and to add insult to your miseries, some conservative idiot will get on TV and blame you for being too lazy to the pursue the American dream. And in this “leader of the free world” very few things are free. If you’re broke and starving in America, chances are that any relatives you might have are struggling too and therefore unable to help you. There is no mother in some rural village you can call to put a bag of maize and beans on a bus to last you until your next paycheck — if you’re fortunate enough to have one.

But American philanthropists and Hollywood like to tackle poverty abroad because it’s cheaper — it leaves no dent on their billions of dollars, but gets their names on CNN. Addressing a problem like the one Diane Latiker has dedicated her life to — getting poor youths out of crime and gangs – would take an investment of billions of dollars and significant political changes. Saving Indonesian children, on the other hand, can be done by writing a $250,000 check, which in some cases is less than the cost of a Hollywood star’s car.

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It’s so fucking annoying to see these greedy idiots spend so much time and money doing shit like this while at the same time claiming to be fighting poverty. It makes me so fucking sick.

The truth is that none of these bastardos know what the fuck they are talking about. The people who know how to tackle poverty don’t get heard, although they do much more on shoestring budgets.

It sickens me to see small non-profits run by people born in the front lines of the war against poverty — who know what the fuck needs to be done — struggle to find funding. On the other hand, any 22-year-old dummy born in the West can secure funding to go fight poverty in African countries he didn’t know existed before he saw the advertisement for the travel grant.

I have spoken to so many brilliant Africans who have tried in vain to find funding. Philanthropic foundations often ask for what they call “a proven track record,” which usually means experience spend a bunch of money on third-world projects that achieve very little. The fact that many of the Africans seeking funding are people who overcame the same challenges, and who know what it took to get become successful, doesn’t matter.

They are doctors, teachers, engineers, professors, lawyers, managers — trusted to know what’s best for the Western societies they inhabit, but considered too inexperienced to know how to solve the problems of their relatives back home.

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1. Somali media in US rally behind famine relief The famine now ravaging Somalia has stirred vivid memories for...

Do not deprive your peoples of hope. Do not cut them off from their future. There are too many scandals and injustices, too much corruption and greed, too many errors and lies, too much violence which leads to misery and to death.

As you might I have already guessed, I have no love for the leaders Pope Benedict’s message was directed to. But had they hired me as a public relations consultant to respond the on their behalf, my response would have been only a slight alteration of the pope words:

Do not deprive our children of their innocence. Do not cut them off from their virginity. There are too many scandals and injustices, too much corruption and greed, too many errors and lies, too much violence which leads to misery and to death.

But I’ll let the leaders worry about that. I will, however, challenge the pope’s notion on the role of witchcraft in Africa. The BBC began the story of the pope’s visit with his warning against witchcraft:

The Pope travelled to the city of Ouidah, the heartland of the Voodoo religion, where [he] called for respect for traditional beliefs but issued a warning against witchcraft.

Apparently, Old Benedict thinks it’s black magic that is to blame for the plight of Africans. May I correct his so-called Holiness by saying that white magic is more to blame?

Fundamentally, there is no difference between a black man in some nondescript hut in rural Benin, practicing “sorcery” to exorcise evil spirits, and a white man in an extravagant building in the Vatican, practicing “religion” to welcome holy spirits. Both are inspired by their believe in “powers” rational human beings find absurd.

And both blame Africa’s poverty on lack of faith — not on the exploitation of the continent’s resources to satisfy spontaneous consumption in the white magician’s homeland. The black magician might point to the African’s refusal to believe strongly that some evil wind goes around the village at night, frustrating the African’s efforts to rise from his dungeon. Similarly, the white magician says it’s the African’s reluctance to strongly believe that 2,000 years ago some guy walked on water.

But because it’s more systematic and far reaching, white magic is much more detrimental than black magic to African welfare. It’s white magic that tells us Africans to reject condoms and put our fate in the hands of the guy who walked on water. And it’s white magicians who tells us that we shouldn’t worry so much about wealth because there is a paradise called Heaven, where only the poor will go to relax and rejoice after death.

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But as the U.S. war in terror has shown, we seldom make use of that advantage. When America entered the war in Afghanistan, many wondered why the most powerful nation had refused to draw from history before going in. If the crumbling of European colonial powers wasn’t enough proof that you can never win a war against even the most crudely armed ragtag militia in it’s own tuff, the more recent failure of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan should have made that clear. Because of understanding of their country of birth, Afghans were able to hold off and eventually defeat the Soviet Union, which like America was a military superpower, but one  that fought wars with less regard to international rules of engagement.

Good Ol’ USA, however, has never been the one to learn from others. (When you think you’re always No. 1 there is nothing anyone else can teach you). The result of that American arrogant know-it-all attitude is a bankrupt nation stuck in two 10-year wars it cannot afford.

Just when you think there cannot be anyone more naive than the leaders of my surrogate homeland, the government of my country of birth enters the arena. With military excursion into Somali, Kenya, like America, has decided that the best way to tackle Islamist extremists is to “fight them over there so we don’t have to fight them here.” I suppose the media’s repeated reference to Kenya as “the largest economy in the region” has gotten leaders of the East African country intoxicated.

The Kenyan government says its decision to cross into Somalia is intended to protect the country’s tourism from incidents like the alleged Al Shabaab across-border attack in September that ended in the killing of a British tourist and the kidnapping of his wife. Did you hear that, ladies and gentlemen? A country that in the first place had failed to protect its borders now thinks that it can go into unfamiliar territory and contain Al Shabaab.

At a press conference Monday,  al-Shabaab spokesman Ali Mohamud Rage vowed to make Kenya suffer for the invasion.  He said: ”Your attack [on] us means your skyscrapers will be destroyed, your tourism will disappear. We shall inflict on you the same damage you inflicted on us. We say to Kenya: did you consider the consequences of the invasion? We know fighting more than you and defeated other invaders before.”

The most notable of the invaders Somali Islamists defeated is none other than the world’s most powerful nation, the United States of America, which in 1993 was forced to withdraw from Mogadishu after losing 18 of its supposedly elite soldiers.

Since then America has had its skyscrapers attacked in the same why Al Shabaab is threatening, and is under around-the-clock watch to avoid more attacks. This stepped-up security has cost America greatly, not only militarily, but financially. When President George W. Bush began to “fight them over there” in two countries, he did not know that he was creating another enemy, but one you can only fight “here” — a declining economy. With it’s sophisticated “shock and awe” weapons, America never thought that a war with Afghans and Iraqis, who were only armed with small arms, would last 10 years. They forgot that the reason burglars strike when no one is home is because they are aware that a man knows his house better than anyone and is more likely to win a fight in his own home.

It’s not too late for Kenya to retreat. But knowing how big the pride of men is, I’m afraid we’re going to see a very long conflict. It doesn’t take a genius to know that, like in Iraq and Afghanistan, a prolonged conflict will likely to draw in Al-Qaeda militants to assist Al Shabaab carry out its threat against Kenyan skyscrapers. (It doesn’t take a genius either to know that those skyscrapers will be filled with Kenyans, most of whom had no say in the decision to go to war).

When Kenya’s time of reckoning comes, we’ll see how a country that isn’t even capable of feeding its people — a country that is home to some of the poorest people on earth — will cope. 

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The highlight of my trip has been going to a club here in Shenzhen, a city in Guangdong Province in south China. The club was full of young women and men, with some men in elaborate female costumes, and others wearing nothing but bow ties and skimpy underwear. But it’s not the revelers’ fashion that impressed me. (I live in the San Francisco and have seen things I can never erase from my soul). It was the fact that the men and women were doing karaoke-style hip-hop performances in perfect English, but not one of them could help me communicate with the bartender.

Incredible, isn’t it? that music transcends language and cultural boundaries? And black music in China? And black American music in China!!!

The most incredible thing was how happy they were to hear that I came from the United States. (I didn’t need my U.S. passport to prove it; just a “yeah, ma nigga!”). They mobbed me and — via Google Translate — said they loved me. They started talking about American hip hop artists. Unlike my Kenyan friends, whom when I traveled home a few years ago I found crazy about Ja Rule five years after he’d become obsolete in the United States, my new Chinese friends were current on hip-hop.

Do you think yours truly disappointed the Chinese party goers by revealing that he hasn’t bought a hip hop album since Doc and Meth released Blackout! 100 years ago? You think I told them that I haven’t been to a hip hop club since  2004? (I hit the big 30 that year and couldn’t get down like I used to. For some reason, the strong Mandingo knees that I could count on to load and unload trucks for 10 hours every day and still have enough juice left to go to a club and do a chini kwa chini all night, began to buckle after my 29 years and 364 days on this earth).

I got on the dance floor and showed my new 中国朋友 how to move the black way. I pretended that I knew all the songs and sang along. (Because the lights were down and my lips are black, they couldn’t tell that I was winging it). As I’m writing this, my back hurts from a night of improvising dances to a music I no longer know anything about.

But, considering that I didn’t have to spend a renminbing Yuan on booze, this pain is sweet.

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The famine now ravaging Somalia has stirred vivid memories for members of the Somali community in the United States, many of whom arrived fleeing similar conditions 20 years earlier. As Al-Shabab, the Muslim group that controls much of Somalia’s southern region, turns away international food donors, Somali media here are working to fill the void.

“Help has to come from the Somali community around the world,” says Hussien Mohammed, director of Sagal Radio Station, which offers in-language radio programming for Somalis and other East African immigrants in the Atlanta area. As news of the famine emerged, Somali media in the United States have in fact positioned themselves as a de-facto hub for donations and other forms of aid to their drought-stricken countrymen.

Efforts include a panel discussion hosted by the Somali American Media Association in Minneapolis, bringing together community leaders and local politicians to discuss the most effective ways to donate funds. The show is scheduled to air next week. In addition, Somali TV of Minnesota has organized a call-in program where people can inquire about how to most effectively send donations. The show’s organizers say it will be posted to YouTube after it airs locally.

One of the places concerned Somalis in the United States can go to donate funds are so-called hawalas, or money wiring agencies. The largest, Dahabshiil, runs 24,000 branches worldwide. The hawala system has been one of the most common ways for Somalis to send money back home via money transfers involving personal connections. Smaller outfits used to make transfers to more rural areas, however, are more informal, making it difficult to measure exactly how much is being remitted.

According to the United Nations, which officially declared a famine in the two southern regions of Bakool and Lower Shabelle, some 350,000 people are at risk of starvation in Somalia. The World Food Program estimates that up to 11 million people are in need of aid across parts of East Africa.

As of Wednesday the WFP began airlifting supplies, bringing 10 tons of nutritional supplies to malnourished children. However the WFP is unable to reach many people in need in southern Somalia, where Al-Shabab is concentrated, due to security concerns.

Al-Shabab emerged out of the Islamic Courts Union (ICU), which controlled much of the country until its collapse in 2006 following a U.S. supported invasion by neighboring Ethiopia. Blamed for much of the violence in Somalia, the group’s connection to terror organizations like Al Qaeda has implicated members of the Somali community in the U.S.

“Everyone is concerned about where the money will end up,” commented Abdirizak Hassan, executive director for the Center for Refugees and Immigrants of Tennessee. Still, he said, support efforts are getting underway.

Hassan estimated that at a recent community fundraiser in Nashville, approximately $4,000 was raised, a fraction of the $1.6 billion called for by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. Another event organized in Minneapolis involved local college students and members of the Somali community.

Al Shabab recently reversed a decision made in early July to allow international food donations from organizations like the WFP and International Red Cross following the U.N. declaration of famine in the country. Spokespersons for the group say the U.N. has exaggerated conditions on the ground and deny that a famine is in fact taking place.

Somalis here don’t seem convinced. Many migrated here following the last famine that struck Somalia in 1991-92, which left hundreds of thousands dead.

“This famine reminds them of that time and they really want to help,” said Saeed Fahia, executive director of the Confederation of Somali Community in Minneapolis. Many are concerned about how best to make the needed donations, and whether or not the aid will reach those most in need.

On the media side, the challenge remains of how best to reach a population scattered across the country, with many speaking little to no English and made up of a high percentage of broken or separated families and at-risk youth. Over the past 10 years, some 50,000 Somali immigrants have arrived in the United States, many of them as refugees fleeing famine and war.

Including Sagal Radio, there are three radio broadcasts that cater to Somalis in and around Atlanta, as well as eight TV and radio programs that serve the Minneapolis-St. Paul area.

Concentrated in select cities such as Minneapolis, Atlanta, and Columbus, the Somali population is dispersed throughout the country, its members reliant on the media for information on a range of issues, including immigration, health care and the legal system. Famine relief can now be added to that list.

Organizations such as UNICEF and UNHCR have offered ways via their websites for people to donate. To donate to UNICEF, click here:  and to donate to UNHCR, please click here.

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WASHINGTON, D.C.—Saro Nkesi still finds it difficult to talk about the years before he finally left Nigeria.

“During the period of 1993 to 1995, I was always staying in the bush and dashed home to eat and went back to the bush again,” he said. “Sometimes I would stay with other friends who were not from Ogoni. It was a terrible time in my life.”

Nkesi participated in nonviolent protests against Shell Oil’s operations in the Niger Delta’s Ogoniland.  He sought to evade the Nigerian government forces that would sweep into Rivers State to suppress the popular resistance to decades of oil exploration unhampered by environmental, developmental or humanitarian concerns. But on one fateful occasion, he said, instead of finding him, “they saw my wife and they killed her.”

Nkesi was a guest speaker at the Second Annual African Justice Initiative Symposium, “Oil & Gas in Africa: A Blessing or a Curse?” hosted by the Washington College of Law at American University earlier this spring. Among the presenters, Nkesi was the only Ogoni eyewitness to the events leading to the hanging of author and activist Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight other Ogoni leaders in 1995 by the regime of the late Nigerian president Sani Abacha.

The organized resistance to oil extraction in Ogoniland prompted Shell to suspend operations there in 1993 and it has yet to resume, but pipelines, some prone to leakage from age or poor maintenance, still traverse the territory. Some estimates are that 9 billion gallons of oil have spilled into the Delta since oil was first discovered in the mid 1950s.

Nana Yaa Anyane-Yeboa, president of the African Justice Initiative and a law student at American University, selected oil as the symposium’s topic last fall, months before tumult began wrenching the Arab world and international markets. She had read about Ogoniland’s history, but particularly the controversy over a yet to be released United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) report. The goal of the report is to provide a roadmap for environmental remediation in Ogoniland but the UNEP team is also charged with identifying the sources of oil pollution there.

Despite its environmental assessment work being funded by a $9.5 million grant from the Shell Petroleum Development Corporation, UNEP has insisted on its capacity to be impartial. Detractors allege otherwise.

Critics, who said they were leaked advance information, have claimed that the report will instead blame the larger percentage oil spills in Ogoniland to sabotage of the pipelines or attempts at “bunkering” or theft of the oil. UNEP denies the allegation. The report is due out this year.

Anyane-Yeboa said she became dismayed by the concerns of environmental activists and other critics that the report thus far “virtually exonerated Shell” for the devastating environmental consequences of its practices.

Meanwhile, Anyane-Yeboa has become acutely aware of oil’s human costs. “What I found shock[ed] and amazed me,” she said. “What I found was people had lost their land and livelihood because of oil. I found people had lost their health because of oil, and I found that people had lost their lives because of oil.” She conceived of the symposium’s topic as a means to educate fellow law students, human rights activists and the Washington area community about the Ogoniland debacle.

Anyane-Yeboa was only a teenager in 1995 when the Ogoni Nine were executed after being sentenced by a military tribunal that allowed them no legal representation and no right to appeal. Born an American to Ghanaian immigrant parents, she said the tragedy of the Ogoni had escaped her notice though she has followed other issues affecting Africa. One of her interests is that Nigeria’s history of oil not be repeated in Ghana where an off-shore field was discovered in 2007. Nigeria is America’s fifth-largest supplier of oil after Canada, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, and Venezuela.

Omoyele Sowore, a Nigerian journalist with Sahara Reporters, and a former student activist in Nigeria, said in his keynote address that the Niger Delta “epitomizes poverty.”  He cited several causes for the region’s condition, including: the loss of fishing as a sustainable occupation due to chemically poisoned water also not fit for human consumption; the decline of agriculture due to polluted land; acid rain caused by the constant flaring of the gas generated by oil production; and a rash of diseases he attributes to oil pollution as their most likely cause.

He said the Delta’s population has no easy access to hospitals, paved roads or other infrastructure one would expect from a region which yields between an estimated 85 to 90 percent of Nigeria’s export earnings. That revenue finances development in the rest of country and pays for the brutal repression by the Nigerian “Kill and Go” police squads and military—as directed by Shell and other petroleum multi-nationals, Sowore said.

To support his claim of Shell’s intimate relationship with the Nigerian government, Sowore cited recent Wikileaks revelations where Shell executives boasted about their influence within every Nigerian ministry. Sowore, who is from the Niger Delta but is not an Ogoni, said the execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa was “a contract killing” carried out by the Abacha regime at the behest of Shell.

Sowore said Shell told the Nigerian government, “We want to get rid of this guy,” because Saro-Wiwa and the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP) had begun to attract international attention about the industry’s egregious practices and the resulting suffering of the Delta’s people.

The Niger Delta, along Nigeria’s Gulf of Guinea coast, includes nine of the country’s 36 states, a multiplicity of tribes and a populace of which the Ogoni are a small number. At issue, in part, is the lack of consensus between the federal government and those states about revenue-sharing formulas derived from oil profits. In the meantime, the environmentally damaging practices from oil exploration have left a crippling legacy.

Judith Brown Chomsky, a cooperating attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights, spoke about the effects of oil extraction. “There are villages in the Niger Delta where children don’t see a dark sky even at night because the oil flares constantly,” she said. In the petroleum extraction process, Chomsky explained that the accompanying gas “comes out with a roar” and is burned off or “flared” in the Niger Delta.

Flaring is less costly than more environmentally sustainable alternatives which reduce profit margins. Shell felt it could operate with impunity because it was veiled from public scrutiny, Chomsky maintained.

Chomsky also discussed Wiwa v Shell, the lawsuit brought against Royal Dutch Shell for human rights abuses under the Alien Tort Statute and the Torture Victim Act in an American court by Ken Saro-Wiwa’s son and other Ogoni plaintiffs. In 2009, after 14 years, Shell, without admitting wrongdoing and before going to trial, settled for $15.5 million. Environmental damages were not a part of the suit, but Chomsky said that through the legal process of discovery, the plaintiffs’ attorneys were “able to read what corporations were thinking and doing from their own documents.”

What became apparent was that Ken Saro-Wiwa and MOSOP were considered a serious threat, in part because of media exposure outside of Africa.

Since 1993, MOSOP’s organized nonviolent resistance has prevented Shell from extracting oil in Ogoniland. But, throughout the Niger Delta, other tribally based organizations and actors have emerged over the years, including MEND (Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta), often employing different (and sometimes violent) tactics than the Ogoni.

Sowore, stressing he did not want to glorify the current maelstrom of violence, said the Niger Delta region “is awash in arms … the Niger Delta region is at war as we speak today.”

As with any war, women and children often pay the highest price and Saro Nkesi, now living in Virginia, has taken it upon himself to assist with their needs as president of the GIA Project Foundation, Inc. He said he is still actively involved with MOSOP and uses his U.S.-based foundation to raise the money he sends to Nigeria for “the children who lost their parents, the children who are not able to afford to go to school … for the widows who have lost their husbands.”

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