The Health Benefits of Soursop

Looking for a delicious and nutritious way to boost your health? Look no further than soursop! Our new infographic is packed with information on the amazing health benefits of this tropical fruit, from its anti-cancer and anti-inflammatory properties to its immune system boosting and digestive health benefits. Check out our infographic to learn more about soursop and how you can incorporate it into your diet!

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The Criminalization of African Spirituality: Part 1

"Democracy means that people can say what they want to. All the people. It means that they can vote as they wish. All the people. It means that they can worship God in any way they feel right, and that includes Christians and Jews and voodoo doctors as well."

~Dalton Trumbo

 

For most of my life Obeah in Jamaica has been a taboo. Scoffed at by academics and intellectuals rooted deep in empiricism and cynicism. The Church associates Obeah with spiritual wickedness and evil, skeptics tend to think it is used to defraud vulnerable people like the snake oil man to swindle and bamboozle. In my family it was the butt of jokes and was the stuff of old time superstition.For me the stuff Obeah was like the mythos of slavery... a literature populated with Rolling Calves, Black Heart men, Ananse, masks, Pocomania, Kumina, Revival, Jonkunnu, Bats(what Jamaican call moths), owls, D. Lawrence, Bible and Key and Maccabees Bibles.

In a more academic light... Obeah is a term used in the West Indies to refer to folk magic, sorcery, and religious practices developed among West African slaves, specifically of Igbo origin. Obeah's history is similar to that of other Afro-American religions including Palo, Vodou, Santería, and Hoodoo. Obeah is practiced in Suriname, Cuba, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Dominica, Guyana, Grenada, Belize, The Bahamas, and other Caribbean nations. Enslaved Africans brought spiritual practices to the Caribbean that included folk healing and a belief in magic for good and for evil to opposition.

Vodun means spirit in the Fon and Ewe languages, pronounced [vodṹ] with a nasal high-tone u; also spelled Vodon, Vodoun, Vodou, Voudou, Voodoo, etc. is practiced by the Ewe people of eastern and southern Ghana, and southern and central Togo; and the Kabye people, Mina people, and Fon people of southern and central Togo, southern and central Benin. It is also practiced by some Gun (Gbe) people of Lagos and Ogun in southwest Nigeria.

It is distinct from the various African traditional religions in the interiors of these countries and is the main source of religions with similar names found among the African Diaspora in the western hemisphere such as Haitian Vodou; Puerto Rican Vodú; Cuban Vodú; Dominican Vudú; Brazilian Vodum; and Louisiana Voodoo. All of these closely related faiths are syncretized with Christianity to various degrees and with the traditional beliefs of the Kongo people and Indigenous American traditions.

Now the term 'Obeah' is first found in documents from the early 18th century, as in its connection to Nanny of the Maroons, but discussion of it becomes more frequent when it was made illegal in Jamaica after Tacky's War, in which an Obeah-man provided advice to the rebels. In 1787 a letter to an English newspaper referred to "Obiu-women" interpreting the wishes of the dead at the funeral of a murdered slave in Jamaica: a footnote explained the term as meaning "Wise-women".

A continuing source of white anxiety related to Obeah was the belief that practitioners were skilled in using poisons, as mentioned in Matthew Lewis's Journal of a West India Proprietor. The European world had equated Black and African Spirituality with their own history of wizards and witchcraft and necromancy. Thousands of people in the Caribbean have been subject to prosecution for their religious and spiritual healing practice, since the first law against Obeah was passed in Jamaica in 1760 then in the anti-Obeah law passed in Barbados in 1818 there was the specific forbidding of the possession of "any poison, or any noxious or destructive substance"during slavery, until the recent past.

A doctor who examined the medicine chest of an Obeah man arrested in Jamaica in 1866 identified white arsenic as one of the powders in it, but could not identify the others. The unnamed correspondent reporting this affirmed "The Jamaica herbal is an extensive one, and comprises some highly poisonous juices, of which the Obeah men have a perfect knowledge."


During the mid 19th century the appearance of a comet in the sky became the focal point of an outbreak of religious fanatical millennialism among the Myal men of Jamaica. Spiritualism was at that time sweeping the English-speaking nations as well, and it readily appealed to those in the Afro-Caribbean diaspora, as spirit contact, especially with the dead, is an essential part of many African religions. During the conflict between Myal and Obeah, the Myal men positioned themselves as the "good" opponents to "evil" Obeah. They claimed that Obeah men stole people's shadows, and they set themselves up as the helpers of those who wished to have their shadows restored.

Myal men contacted spirits in order to expose the evil works they ascribed to the Obeah men, and led public parades which resulted in crowd-hysteria that engendered violent antagonism against Obeah men. The public "discovery" of buried Obeah charms, presumed to be of evil intent, led on more than one occasion to violence against the rival Obeah men. Laws were passed that limited both Obeah and Myal traditions but due to the outrages perpetrated by the mobs of Myalists, the British government of Jamaica sent many Myal men to prison, and this, along with the failure of their millennialist prophecies. 

Obeah laws, which still exist in many Caribbean countries, there have also been laws against specific religious groups, including the Spiritual Baptist faith, which was outlawed for a substantial part of the twentieth century in Trinidad and Tobago, St. Vincent, and Grenada. Other people faced prosecution for independent religious and healing work under laws against practicing medicine without a license, vagrancy, and ‘night noises’, among others.

• 1760: In response to a major slave rebellion, the colonial government outlaws Obeah for the first time in the Caribbean, with the Act to Remedy the Evils arising from Irregular Assemblies of Slaves, defining Obeah as: "The wicked Art of Negroes... pretending to have Communication with the Devil and other evil spirits"
• 1898: Under the Obeah Law practitioners face 12 months in jail and flogging. An Obeah practitioner is defined as: "Any person who, to effect any fraudulent or unlawful purpose, or for gain, or for the purpose of frightening any person, uses, or pretends to use any occult means, or pretends to possess any supernatural power or knowledge"
  
• 1908: Parliament passes the Medical Law, which was intended to regulate medical practice, but was also used frequently in cases to define difference between medicine and Obeah

Marcus the Prophet!

Courtesy of Axum Veggie Café...

Rastafari Today Quotes!

The highest education is that which does not merely give us information but makes our life in harmony with all existence.
~Rastafari Today

Blaze up the Challawah!

The 5 Health Benefits of Mountain Sop

#Mountainsop #Graviola #TropicalFruit #HealthyEating #Nutrition #AntiCancer #AntiInflammatory #ImmuneSystemBoost #DigestiveHealth #HealthyLiving #HealthyLifestyle #Superfood #HealthyRecipes #FoodAsMedicine #HealthyFruit #HealthySnack #HealthBenefits #NaturalRemedy #HealthyTips #EatClean #WholeFoods #PlantBased #HealthyFoodie #HealthAndWellness

PRESS RELEASE: The Rastafari Coral Gardens Committee (RCGC) is now The Rastafari Coral Gardens Benevolent Society (RCGBS)

PRESS RELEASE:

Yannick Pessoa (RCGBS- PRO) · June 30, 2015

The Rastafari Coral Gardens Committee (RCGC) isnow The Rastafari Coral Gardens Benevolent Society (RCGBS).

As our world becomes smaller, indigenous communities are gaining increasing international awareness. Local groups and societies are evolving to serve their members, and communities, and in doing so, have come to reconsider their roles,their images, their identities, their “branding,” and, consequently, their names. This is such an occasion for The RastafariCoral Gardens Benevolent Society (RCGBS) as it embarks on its continuing journey.

The Rastafari Coral Gardens Committee’s primary role has been to spread awareness of the Coral Gardens atrocities of 1963, to foster dialogueon the subject and prevent any further atrocity from taking place by implementing proactive administration for the preservation of the Rastafari community. In light of this broad aim, the activities of the Committee included the following:

1. Give cash, donate food items, purchase furniture and equipment for needy elders who are victims of the Coral Gardens atrocities
   
   
2. Organise health clinics and transport sick elders to the doctor
   
   
3. Assist with funeral expenses of elders
   
   
4. Develop a scholarship program in partnership with the Western Jamaica Campus of the University of the West Indies for youth from the Rastafari community.
   
   
5. Produce a newsletter called “Chimurenga” which means “Revolutionary Struggle”

As the RCGC's role evolved into socio-economic directions, the Committee began to face challenges because of the magnitude ofassistance needed and the small amount of human and financialresources at its disposal. The Executive bodyconsequently recommended to its members that they seekregistration as a Benevolent Society. This move is intended to garnerthe support of the Jamaican State and society, target local and international agencies that are established to assist the needy, andstrengthen the efforts of the organisation at improving transparencyand accountability. 

The Society was registered as a Legal Entity under the Friendly SocietiesAct on April 23, 2015. On Sunday, June 21, 2015, the InauguralGeneral Meeting was convened at the University of the West IndiesOpen Campus in Montego Bay. The new name and status simply reflect current reality and remove previous limitations. The Rastafari Coral Gardens Benevolent Society can now move forward to become a self sustaining entity in a global environment.

Haile Selassie is the Esteemed World Ruler!

PRESS RELEASE: Thank You from The Rastafari Coral Gardens Committee

The Rastafari Coral Gardens Committee thanks Speakers, Sponsors, Artistes, Well-wishers and the Rastafari Community for participation in the 52nd Commemoration of the atrocity against Rastafari 1963 “Bad Friday” and the recognition of Empress Menen Earthstrong Success.

Empresses receiving the Menen Award

Over 25 Rastafari Elders, Matriarch and Patriarch were given an entire day of royal treatment on the cozy grounds of Montego Bay Cricket Club , Jarrett Park on April 3rd 2015 at the annual Coral Gardens “(Bad Friday)” Commemoration. The day commenced with the Elders, many of whom are victims of the atrocities of the Coral Gardens incident being given medical checkups by Dr. Jodine Jacto - Tafari and the medical team, doing blood sugar test, blood pressure test, nutritional and other medical advises. Later in the afternoon the seated elders were treated to a scrumptious banquet of wine, cake, sip and food by the culinary team, a running lap of honor that turned into many laps were done by Jackie Roots and her Children on the ground during the banquet.


The event then turned its attention towards the recognition of Empress Mennen 125th Birthday and awarded certificates of recognition to nine Rastafari Matriarchs for their continued struggle in the development of the Rastafari Community. Special attention given to posthumous awarded Ivorine Walsh (Mama Ita) a great warrior for the upliftment of women and mother of popular reggae Artiste Queen Ifrica.




Patrons were moved by the messages from out of the Speakers Corner of the event. Maureen Minto, Clinton Hutton, Bunny Wailer, Ras Iya-V, Michael Barnett, Maxine Stowe, inspired the audience with messages about our struggle as Rastafari and pan-Africanist in the 21st century, reaffirming that the struggle continue even as it is passed from generation to generation.



The cultural presentations were filled with energetic performances from poets, singers, drummers and the empresses Sis Isis , Sis Isha and Sis Jackie Roots marshalled the proceedings with Jah Mike Sound System to a prompt after 2:00am closure making way for the spiritual Nyahbhing Chanting till around 8:00am in the Saturday morning.

Information about the Committee’s full range of programs and services will soon be available on-line as we seek to broaden our outreach and education of the public of our missions, aims and progress in the struggle.

The Rastafari Coral Gardens Committee is a Rastafari / Pan African non-aligned organization centred around the Coral Gardens Incident, attending to the Rastafari Community, elders and survivors of the atrocity also the youths.

Beckles Address on Reparations

Beckles Address on Reparations (SOUNDCLOUD AUDIO)

ADDRESS DELIVERED BY PROFESSOR SIR HILARY BECKLES, CHAIRMAN OF THE CARICOM REPARATIONS COMMISSION, HOUSE OF COMMONS, PARLIAMENT OF GREAT BRITAIN, COMMITTEE ROOM 14, THURSDAY, JULY 16, 2014, 9:00 P.M.

Madam Chair, the distinguished member of Parliament for Hackney North and Stoke Newington, Diane Abbott, other distinguished members of the House of Lords, and House of Commons, Excellencies of the Diplomatic Corp, colleagues at the head table, Ladies and Gentlemen.

I speak this evening, in this honourable chamber of the House of Commons, as Chairman of the Caricom Commission on Reparations. My colleagues of the Commission are tasked with the preparation and presentation of the evidentiary basis for a contemporary truth: that the Government of Great Britain, and other European states that were the beneficiaries of enrichment from the enslavement of African peoples, the genocide of indigenous communities, and the deceptive breach of contract and trust in respect of Indians and other Asians brought to the plantations under indenture, have a case to answer in respect of reparatory justice.

The case of genocide is not only in respect of our decimated native community. It is also important to recognise the genocidal aspect of chattel slavery in the Caribbean.

British slave ships brought 5.5 million enslaved Africans into their Caribbean colonies over 180 years.

When slavery was abolished in 1838 they were just 800,000 persons remaining. That is, a retention/survival rate of 15%.

The regime of enslavement was crafted by policies and attitudes that were clearly genocidal.

Jamaica received 1.5 million Africans. Only 300,000 remained at Emancipation (20%).

Barbados received 600,000 Africans. Only 83,000 remained at Emancipation (14%).

This case is for the Caricom governments to present on behalf of its citizens. I am sure that in its presentation there will be due regard for the principles of diplomacy and development cooperation - for which they have long distinguished themselves. This process will bring honour and dignity to the people of the Caribbean as well as to the people of Great Britain and Europe.

Caricom governments, like the government of Great Britain, represent nations that are independent and equal. As such, they should proceed on the basis of their legitimate equality, without fear of retribution, in the best interest of humanity, and for a better future for us all.

I am honoured to be asked to speak in this historic parliament of the people of Great Britain. Like you I am aware that this Parliament prepared the official political basis of the crimes that defined the colonial past. It is here, in this House, that the evil system of slavery, and genocide, were established. This House passed laws, framed fiscal policies, and enforced the crimes that have produced harmful legacies and persistent suffering now in need of repair.

This House also made emancipation from slavery and independence from colonialism an empowering reality. It is in here, we now imagine, that laws for reparatory justice can be conceptualized and implemented. It is in here, we believe, that the terrible wrongs of the past can be corrected, and humanity finally and truthfully liberated from the shame and guilt that have followed these historical crimes.

We must believe in the corrective power of this Parliament to respond positively to this present challenge, and in the process free itself from the bondage of its own sins and crimes. Without this belief our journey here this evening would be lacking integrity, and without a doubt, would be a useless exercise.

But I speak in this honourable House this evening, not only as chairman of a rightfully constituted commission that is peopled by some of our finest Caribbean citizens, and who have been selected by our distinguished Presidents and Prime Ministers, but as a Caribbean person with an affinity for this country. I was raised and educated here. I came from the Caribbean to this country as a child; I grew to maturity here; and was educated here in a fine university that has distinguished itself in the Liberal-Progressive pedagogy of the nation.

Great Britain, therefore, is my second home and I care for it as I care for my first home, the Great Caribbean. I wish for Great Britain, as I do for the Great Caribbean, peace and prosperity. I wish that their shared past, painful though it has been, will be transformed into a moral force of mutual respect and development cooperation.

It is for these reasons that I have joined the Caribbean and global movement for reparatory justice. I believe we can settle this case within the context of diplomatic initiatives that are consistent with our status as equal nations.

The crimes committed against the indigenous, African, and Asian peoples of the Caribbean are well documented. We know of the 250 years of slave trading, chattel slavery, and the following 100 years of colonial oppression.

Slavery was ended in 1838, only to be replaced by a century of racial apartheid, including the denigration of Asian people. Indigenous genocide, African chattel slavery and genocide, and Asian contract slavery, were three acts of a single play – a single process by which the British state forcefully extracted wealth from the Caribbean resulting in its persistent, endemic poverty.

I wish to comment, as a result, on the 1833 Act of Emancipation, and how this august Parliament betrayed the enslaved people of the Caribbean by forcing them to pay more than 50% of the cost of their own emancipation. This is an aspect of the history long hidden from public view.

We know, for example, that this Parliament in 1833 determined that the 800,000 enslaved people in the Caribbean were worth, as chattel property, £47 million. This was their assessed market value.

We know that this Parliament determined that all slave owners should receive just and fair compensation for the official taking away of their property.

We know that this Parliament provided the sum of £20 million in grants to the slave owners as fair compensation for the loss of their human chattel.

And we know that this Parliament determined that the enslaved people would receive none of this compensation. The argument made in this House was that ‘property’ cannot receive property compensation. This Parliament, in its Emancipation Act, upheld the law that black people were not human, but property.

What this Parliament has hid from the world is that it also determined that the remaining £27 million would be paid by the enslaved people to their enslavers, by means of a 4 year period of free labour called the Apprenticeship.

This period of additional free labour by the emancipated represented the enforced extraction of £27 million by the state. It was a cruel and shameful method of legislating Emancipation by forcing the enslaved to pay more than 50% of the financial cost of their own freedom. The £20 million paid the enslavers by this Parliament was less than the £27 million paid by the enslaved to the enslavers as dictated by this House.

I wish now to engage the argument of the British Government that the slavery and other colonial crimes were ‘legal’, and that they took place ‘a long time ago’, and are beyond the border of adjudication.

Allow me, madam Chair, to breach protocol and to interject myself into the discourse, in order to demonstrate how very contemporary and current this exploitation of the Caribbean people is and has been.

Upstairs this chamber sits the Earl of Harewood. He is an honourable member of the House of Lords. But does Lord Harewood know that my grandfather after Independence in Barbados in 1966 laboured on his sugar plantation, as did his father and forefathers, going back to the days of slavery? Does the goodly Lord know that as a child I took lunch for my grandfather into the canefields of his sugar plantation? Lord Harewood, and my family, go back a long way, from slavery right into the present.

Take also the very aristocratic and very distinguished Cumberbatch family. It has now produced the brilliant young actor, Benedict Cumberbatch [who I would love to meet one day]. Benedict’s grandfather owned the estate on which my beloved great grandmother worked all her adult life. They enslaved my family on their Cleland plantation in the parish of St. Andrew. My great grandmother, who helped to raise me, and who we all called ‘mammy’, carried the name Adriana Cumberbatch. The actor and academic are joined therefore by a common past and present, and maybe, common blood!

My case is but one of ten thousand such cases. Everywhere across the Caribbean the presence of our enslavers can be identified in our daily domestic lives. This history is not remote. It is alive and pressing upon our daily affairs.

And what have our people and governments been doing with respect to this legacy since we have gained national independence? The truth is, the people of the Caribbean have been very courageous in their effort at self-development and self-help in respect of this terrible history and enduring legacy.

Our citizens have faced this past head on, and have established a vibrant culture of community self-help and sustainable regional development mobilization. We are not beggars! We are not subservient! We do not want charity and handouts! We want justice! Reparatory justice!

When all is said and done, our governments these past 50 years have been cleaning up the mess left behind by Britain’s colonial legacy. Our finest Presidents and Prime Ministers have been devising projects to clean up the awful mess inherited from slavery and colonisation. They must be commended for this effort, but the fact is, this legacy of rubble and ruin, persistent poverty, and racialised relations and reasoning, that continues to cripple our best efforts, has been daunting.

Britain, and its Parliament, cannot morally and legally turn their back upon this past, and walk away from the mess they have left behind. This Parliament has to return to the scene of its crimes, and participate as a legitimate parliament, as a legal parliament, in the healing and rehabilitation of the Caribbean.

We cannot, and should not, be asked to do this by ourselves. We have done our part. This Parliament must now return, and do its part, within the context of reparatory justice, and within the framework of development cooperation.

I wish to give two examples of how this reparatory justice can work:

(1)   Jamaica, Britain’s largest slave colony, was left with 80% black functional illiteracy at Independence in 1962. From this circumstance the great and courageous Jamaican nation has struggled with development and poverty alleviation. The deep crisis remains. This Parliament owes the people of Jamaica an educational and human resource investment initiative.


(2)   Barbados, Britain’s first slave society, is now called the amputation capital of the world. It is here that the stress profile of slavery and racial apartheid; dietary disaster and psychological trauma; and the addiction to the consumption of sugar and salt, have reached the highest peak. The country is now host to the world’s most virulent diabetes and hypertension epidemic. This Parliament owes the people of Barbados an education and health initiative.

It is the same for all our countries; the Bahamas, the Leewards, the Windwards, Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago, Belize, and beyond.

The Caricom Ten Point Plan for Reparatory Justice addresses these development issues that are central to the case Britain has to answer.

It is an invitation to Great Britain to demonstrate leadership within the legal, moral, and diplomatic culture of the world, within the Commonwealth, and within its relations the Caribbean.

There can be no escaping the importance of this exchange of views about the matter before this honourable chamber tonight.

It took all of the 19th century to uproot slavery from the Caribbean; from Haiti in 1804 to the Spanish sub-region in the 1880s. It took another 100 years to create citizenship, nationhood, and democracy across the Caribbean as a development framework. We have helped ourselves.

This 21st century will be the century of global reparatory justice. Citizens are now, for the first time since they were driven into retreat by colonialism, able to stand up for reparatory justice without fear. Their claim, their just claim for reparations, will not go away. Rather, like the waves upon our beautiful shores, they will keep coming until reparatory justice is attained.

Madam Chair, we call upon you, and all members of this House, to rise to this challenge and to assist Great Britain to be truly worthy of the title “Great”. I urge you to do the right thing, in the right way. There is no other right time, other than right now, in our time. There is so much to gain from your leadership. The Caribbean is counting on you.

In 1823, the honourable Thomas Buxton, M.P. for Weymouth and Melcombe Regis, presented a bill to this House calling for an Emancipation Act with compensation for the enslaved people. His bill and vision were defeated. Instead, ten years later, an emancipation bill was passed, not with compensation for the enslaved, but with handsome and generous compensation for enslavers. Some 40% of the national expenditure of the country was handed over to slave-owners as reparations.

The enslaved people of the Caribbean got nothing. Indeed, they were then called upon by the said Emancipation Act to give £27 million in free labour to their enslavers. The injustice and the cruelty of that Emancipation Act, remain today like a fish bone stuck in our throats.

We urge you, madam Chair, and other members of this Parliament, to rise up and bring the Buxton vision to life. He was a noble warrior for reparatory justice; his spirit can return to this House, in both places, and the 21st Century will be ours to forge a new moral order for our collective wellbeing.

On behalf of the Caricom Reparations Commission, all my colleagues across the Caribbean who have worked with our governments in order to bring this case before you, I ask that you respond with humility and openness when your government receives an invitation to meet with our governments in summit in order to discuss this matter.

May the values and the spirit of development cooperation and mutual respect guide us all.

Thank you madam Chair.

Faces Of Africa - Haile Selassie: The pillar of Ethiopia, part 1 & 2

LALIBELA, Ethiopia & E.T. Extraterrestial Stargates of the Ancient AFRIC...

Let Us Consider the Queen!

Yogiraj on Meeting Haile Selassie

Yogiraj Recounts His 1982 Meeting With Haile Selassie, Conquering Lion Of The Tribe Of Judah!

OCCUPY PINNACLE

As you may be aware there is movement afoot to get the issue that surround Pinnacle addressed... contribute and play apart...

If you are in Jamaica donate at any National Commercial Bank (NCB)... Leonard P Howell Foundation Act # 1000003 Originally opened at Manor Parkway branch ( if they need to know) Also you may send your US$20 contribution to http://lphfoundation.org/donate/

Madiba: Aluta Continua

“Overcoming poverty is not a task of charity, it is an act of justice. Like Slavery and Apartheid, poverty is not natural. It is man-made and it can be overcome and eradicated by the actions of human beings. Sometimes it falls on a generation to be great. YOU can be that great generation. Let your greatness blossom.” ― Nelson Mandela

The chronicle of Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela, and the variety of ways in which his story crossed paths with Jamaica is important to the island's history and that of our diaspora. It must become part of the story of the emerging self-belief of people of African descent. It is also an account of a human being allowing his best and noblest self to prevail.

It is easy and very plausible to tell Mandela's story without also speaking to Jamaica's story. But as a Jamaican it would be remiss of me not to mention, how this little nation, smaller than the population of Soweto and separated by thousands of nautical miles from the shorings of South Africa, prognosticated for the isolation of South Africa in response to apartheid from as early as 1961, three years before Mandela was condemned to Robben Island.

One of Jamaica's prime ministers, Michael Manley, was in numerous ways the designer of the sporting and cultural boycott of South Africa, which, incidentally, was more cogent than economic sanctions to that degree that the psychology of being a white South African was concerned. It is little wonder that Jamaica was one of the first two countries visited by Madiba after his incarceration. He visited Jamaica and Cuba in July 1991, with our beloved Winnie Madikize Mandela at his side, and they received honour from the Jamaican people.

He was a visionary, he had a grand project. He was political. He had an avid sense of strategic timing. Yet he wasn't Machiavellian. He was loved because he was neither Mugabe nor Blair. His vision ran through his life. He was noble. And, like a virtuous father, to be kind, he sometimes could be cruel.

He was distinguished and most especially he had an vast love for his people and for the project of establishing a non-racial and non-sexist South Africa.

Mandela vigorously defended of his loyalties to Iran, Cuban leader Fidel Castro and Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, all of whom supported him in his battles against South Africa's apartheid regime.

Mandela was on the U.S. terrorism watch list until 2008, when then-President George W. Bush signed a bill removing Mandela from it. (Obama is yet to oblige Marcus Mosiah Garvey similar courtesies.)

South Africa’s apartheid regime designated Mandela’s African National Congress (ANC) as a terrorist organization for its battle against the nation’s legalized system of racial segregation that lasted from 1948 to 1994. (Marxist legal theory at work here: Karl Marx argued that the law is the mechanism by which one social class, usually referred to as the "ruling class", keeps all the other classes in a disadvantaged position).

Former U.K. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher also described Mandela’s ANC as a “typical terrorist organization” in 1987, refusing to impose sanctions on South Africa’s apartheid regime. President Ronald Reagan did as well.

But Madiba was more than that, he was an African man of moral sense. He was a man of virtue. Moral excellence and moral sense that made him so acclaimed globally since he led a nation at a time when virtue and morality were universally absent amongst global leaders. He slammed Bush and Blair for the war on Iraq: 'What I am condemning is that one power, with a president who has no foresight and who cannot think properly, is now wanting to plunge the world into a holocaust.' For Blair he had these words: 'He is the foreign minister of the United States. He is no longer prime minister of Britain.'

He rose above acrimony and bitterness. He was unselfish and could reach out to his enemies and cross many divides. He was eminent because he was the great unifier. In many ways he was the designer of the New South Africa.

Mandela was neither magnate nor angel. Mandela wasn't unaccompanied in the grand journey of African redemption in South Africa. One only has to read Bertolt Brecht’s great poem, Questions From a Worker Who Reads, to know: 'Who built Thebes of the 7 gates? / In the books you will read the names of kings. / Did the kings haul up the lumps of rock?...'

The fight to emancipate South Africa was a collectivized crusade. Furthermore it was the force of the most oppressed, the workers in the factories, the destitute in the community, blue-collar women and youth that ultimately carried the apartheid government, if not totally to its knees, at the least to talk terms and discuss the conditions of the end of their racial scheme.

All struggle requires a vehicle, a social movement with leaders that can present political focus, tackle the arduous strategic and tactical routes. Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela's ANC came to prevail. Even so, Mandela was the first to recognise the parts played by a broad array of social movements that formed the fight for national liberation and the mass democratic movement.

And while Mandela was the one to start dialogue with the apartheid government, he tied himself to the collective leadership of the ANC. He took the first steps, he led but he did so as part of a collective. He was an organisational man. He took pains to explain he was a product of the ANC. He was a man of the black, green and gold – but he could reach beyond organisational limits.

He had this quality of being able to keep people together. Even his critics – and he had them – submitted to him at the end of the day as a moral leader. Without him I can't envision how the transition would have gone.

Aye, zillions of words will be spoken and written on Madiba’s legacy, now, in the months to come, next year and thenceforth. And we will scramble to do this legacy justice. The hardest part will be to catch the essential Mandela, going beyond myth-making whilst precisely evaluating the inconsistent nature of that legacy.

Since the present can't be interpreted without understanding the past, and not everything that is haywire with current day South Africa can be put at the doorway of Zuma or Mbeki. The negotiated resolution that effected a democratic South Africa on the cornerstone of one person one vote will be reckoned as Mandela’s greatest accomplishment. It avoided the scorched earth route of bloodletting which we at present see in Syria. And even so it's those compromises that are nowadays falling apart at the seams. The unharmonious social inequality (very Marxist in nature) that has given rise to South Africa as a country of two nations: one white and relatively prosperous, the second black and poor (I believe arx would have termed these the: bourgeoisie and proletariat respectively).

Social divide the hallmark of society today!

Mandela’s legacy will likewise have to be weighed by the reality that South Africa is more disunited than ever as a result of inequality and social exclusion. The rich are richer and the poor poorer. The great unifier could undertake great emblematic acts of reconciliation to pacify the white nation but because, by definition, this involved sacrificing the redistribution of wealth, reconciliation with the whites was performed at the expense of the large majority of black people.

Mandela was great, but not so great that he could bridge the social divide built into the 21st century capitalist economy that has given us the era of the 1 percenters. It is the ill-fated timing of South Africa's transition, coming about as it did in the period in which global power got inextricably tied into the global corporation, empowered through the conventions of neoliberal globalisation. Reconciliation necessitated the forsaking of ANC policy as vocalised by Mandela on his discharge from jail, 'nationalisation of the mines, banks and monopoly industry is the policy of the ANC and the change or modification of our views in this regard is unimaginable.'

Nevertheless it's this forsaking of nationalisation, nationalisation representing the redistribution of wealth which was determined by the needs of reconciliation not just with the white establishment but with the international capitalist economy. His encounters with the international elite at Davos, the home of the World Economic Forum, convinced him that compromises needed to be made with the financiers. In the words of Ronnie Kasrils: 'That was the time from 1991–1996 that the battle for the soul of the ANC got underway and was lost to corporate power and influence. I will call it our Faustian moment when we became entrapped.'

It's exactly this capitalistic road that's verified such a calamity and which could ultimately demolish Mandela’s life’s work. To do justice to Mandela’s lifetime of commitment and sacrifice for equality betwixt black and white, the fight must continue.

It today has got to stress on subduing inequality and attaining social justice. In this fight the entire African Diaspora will require the greatness and sapience of umpteen Mandelas. Our brethren and sistren in South Africa require an organisation committed to marshalling all South African black and white for the freeing of the wealth of that state from the hands of a bantam elite. It will necessitate a movement akin to Mandela’s ANC, a social movement based on a collective leadership with the blended qualities of Steve Biko, Neville Alexander, Walter Sisulu, Albertina Sisulu, Govan Mbeki, Ahmed Kathrada, Fatima Meer, Chris Hani, Ruth First, Joe Slovo, Robert Sobukwe, IB Tabata and the many greats that led the battle for African liberation. But most importantly the African Diaspora and South Africa will need the multitude who take their fate into their own hands and become their own liberators.

Are these the things that Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela struggled to achieve?

Save Pinnacle for RasTafari

The planned eviction of I and I Rastafari family from Pinnacle -- the first self-sufficient Rastafari community on the island, located on lands purchased by Leonard P Howell -- seems to be manifesting as Babylon would will it. Already set to give away Goat Islands the Government now intends to take Rastafari lands.

So I and I would like to know, while Jamaica works out with its neighbours sanctions against the Dominican Republic for disinheriting Haitians in that country, our own courts do the same to Rastas?

As far as I and I comprehend, the Jamaican State has made the site a national heritage site, and wishes to evict whoever lives on it. Hence this is firstly a case about land title -- who "owns" the land?

Many of the revolutions of history were fought on grounds of land and property, the Coral Gardens incident of 1963 had similar issues of land ownership to the dispute and ensuing tragedy. So, for public clarity I and I would like to know whose land is it?

If the Rastafarianism is a recognised religious group in Jamaica, and by this I mean in law -- which I believe they are -- and seeing that Jamaica has recently adopted its own Bill of Rights, then there is no denying that Rastafari is a legitimate with regard to religious freedom as recognised in Jamaica, Great Britain, the United States, and other countries. I and I believe one of the arguments against this heinous act of the state, is based on freedom of religion.(ie by evicting off the land and interfering with Rastafari's freedom of religion). Thus this makes the case a constitutional one as well. Does the public defender have anything to say?

I and I cannot be sure what the State intends to do with the site. If the idea is to keep it as State property, as an important part of Jamaican history, it may seem hard to argue against that. After all, the State may argue that they are taking care of the place by doing this, and making sure its historical significance is well known by everyone. This is a controversial notion and forces the question, who have the stakeholders consulted? Could not an initiative that engenders a community and communal heritage trust be set up to navigate the dual existence of a heritage site and the Rastafarian community?

Bearing this in mind, I ask, is it time for some Rastafari agencies and groups, artistes, and lawyers to find a way to take this case to the Privy Council or the Caribbean Court of Justice? There needs to be good advocacy and help in raising international awareness for this undoubted human rights travesty.

I encourage both the Rastafari community, as well as the State, to examine the Saramaka People v Suriname case before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. In this case, descendants of self-liberated African slaves were held to be "indigenous peoples" and to enjoy the rights recognised to these categories of people under international law. A similar case can be made for the communities at Pinnacle as well. Using that line of argument, if the land if sold no project will be able to start unless the consent of the local communities has been secured by the company. (See the International Finance Corporation Performance Standard number 5 and 7). This is a powerful tool. I hope you understand, this does not change anything with regards to the title to the land, but at least it could prevent the land from being destroyed by logging, mining, tourist resorts, or whatever their plans are.

Ultimately, whilst seeing that Jamaica has not joined the appellate jurisdiction of the Caribbean Court of Justice, it would appear that no case can be brought there. The final Court of Appeal of Jamaica is still the London-based Privy Council. They apply the same law so it ought not to matter much for your case. These are issues representatives of the RasTafari community and its lawyers if there are any must be aware of.

This injustice cannot be allowed!

Read more: http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/letters/Save-Pinnacle-for-RasTafari_15580078#ixzz2moS7571i

p.s. Thanks to Nadia Bernaz of RightsAsUsual for her expertise on the matters of rights and point of law!

The Debacle at Pinnacle: RasTafari Robbed of The Promised Key - Babylon's New Assault!

#Rastafari robbed!!!
So what of OUR PROMISED KEY?

The planned eviction of InI RasTafari Family from Pinnacle: the first self-sufficient RasTafari Community on the island located on lands purchased by Hon. Leonard P Howell, seem to be manifesting as Babylon would will it!

IS THIS A CASE FOR THE #CCJ???
The Caribbean Court of Justice is a shared final court of appeal for currently three Commonwealth Caribbean countries: Barbados, Guyana and Belize. Jamaica is probably the next country of the region that will stop sending their appeals to the London-based Privy Council and switch to the CCJ as well. A human rights assessment of the Court and concluded that its very creation constitutes a positive step towards better access to justice in the region and shows once again the key role superior courts can play in protecting the rights of vulnerable groups.

Bearing this in mind again I ask is it time for some RasTafari agencies and groups artistes and lawyers, to find a way to take this case to the CCJ???

Time for #Rasta to find the #CaribbeanCourtofJustice!

Land reform and revolution reaching to ahead... THIS CAN'T WORK!

Whapp'm to "adverse possession"???

Gi weh GOAT ISLAND and tief RASTA LAND! (Having given away the Goat Islands the Government now intends to steal RasTafari lands!)

So InI would like to know, while #Jamaica works out with its neighbours sanctions against the Dominican Republic for disinheriting #Haitians in that country our own courts do the same to Rastas????

Why this situation wasn't blasted over the #media ages and ages ago? This case has been in court for a while now! Where are the artistes to chant on this issue???

Leonard Howell, his seed and scions, the early Howellites all suffered for this. InI cannot leave History to repeat itself. InI will not allow Mr. Lake and his friends at the National Heritage Trust to deceive us into believing they care to preserve RasTafari legacy.

Never forget the atrocities of CORAL GARDENS, when many RasTafari bredda and sista were abused and massacred.

As a member of the Rastafari community in Montego Bay and growing up in the aftermath of the Coral Garden atrocity and having gleaned 2nd hand knowledge of it, heard first person accounts, InI cannot sit by whilst InI bredda and sista are being dealt another modern day injustice and atrocity, no matter the civility of the apparent legal process, this is a violation of a vulnerable sector of society by the state, guised as civil law and legal prociess, it is vile and unethical, a violation of culture!

#ancestoral land theft, Rasta #oppressed in the 21st century, SUBDIVISION... robbery...

http://lphfoundation.org/rastafari-ordered-to-vacate-pinnacle-by-january-31-2014-resident-magistrate-vashti-chatoor-131113/

#Rastafarian #digitalactivism #socialactivism #IandI #Selassie#Haile #EqualRights #Justice

Jamaica, Black Leadership and the Future!

It's been over a year since Jamaica 50 and sometimes I wonder have we forgotten who we are as a people and has the media forgotten who we are! 

There was a time when PanAfricanism was ripe in the island, with the likes of Walter Rodney and Rastafari played a role as the memory of the people, when people remembered their Africaness. There was a time when Michael Manley was in dialogue with Kwame Nkruma and Julius Nyrere. 

Oh come on, for goodness sake! We were a people that inspired Haile Selassie to come here, a man so revered he was on the cover of Time several times and featured in the national geographic and is even spoken of highly still today in modern literature such as Robert Greene's Strategies of War and Laws of Power, as well as Wings to Freedom by and Indian Yogi named Yogiraj Gurunath Siddhanath. Jamaicans are a people that inspired Nelson Mandela to come here. We produced Marcus Garvey one of the greatest black icons and PanAfricanist of all times. We produced Bob Marley who not only the world loved but Africans.

So why is it then that as Africa is now being looted and plundered by Europe and America, commercially colonized by China with a renewed 21st century thrust... Why is no one speaking out about it? Europeans are streaming into northwest Africa en masse, the huge U.S. airlift capacity may soon be necessary to keep the “Crusaders” supplied and the military industrial complex oiled and firing. African militaries are being cobbled to do the Caucasian’s bidding. 

The U.S. has almost practically establish a Somalia-like operation on the near side of Africa – with Americans at the helm. A sentiment echoed by even republican politician in the states Ron Paul who said "U.S. Action in Mali is Another Undeclared War".

All this while in America itself under the Obama administration the plight of Black Americans has worsened:  A recent interview on MSNBC’s “Meet the Press,” NAACP CEO and president, Ben Jealous, told the show’s host that black Americans “are doing far worse” than when President Obama first took office. “The country’s back to pretty much where it was when this president started,” Jealous told show host David Gregory. “White people in this country are doing a bit better. Black people are doing far worse.”  Dr. Julianne Malveaux of Your Black World recently wrote that the Obama Administration needs to speak out more about existing racial disparities and persistent problems in black unemployment.

The Black Diaspora has seen the US elect thousands of African American local and state officials and re-elect the first black president. But Obama seems to have proven just a symbol, symbolic and nothing more. Nothing real, nothing substantial, nothing progressive as it pertains to the plight of blacks.

The media is slow and unwilling to note that our black leaders are dithering. Floundering. Flailing... failing and falling even. Symbolism supersedes the fact that black leadership has few or no victories to boast for the seventies, the eighties, the nineties or the new century, apart from their own illustrious careers. 

No black leader is man enough to speak to or look at the fact that the war on drugs and the prison state sprung up in north America. The symbol of Obama over rides the fact that black unemployment remains at record levels, that US wages have not risen in thirty years and that the first black president apparently forgot his campaign promise to raise the minimum wage to $9.50 an hour almost as soon as he made it. And what has been done for the Caribbean? Nothing. He continues an illegal international embargo on Cuba, he continues Gitmo torture in our territory, and turned down our request to exonerate Jamaica's hero and Rastafari Icon Marcus Garvey. 

Obama seems a symbol used to nullify and quiet the analytic black mind and voice. "Nigger shut up we got a black president now!" 1 black President... and 10 million  black persons still suffering. And let us not examine his neglect of his black family in Kenya, or his brother that lives in a Shanty Town.

Who in Jamaica or the media is willing to look past the fact that he is JUST a black president and willing to examine the fact that the black role model president conducts weekly “Terror Tuesday” meetings in the White House basement at which he dispatches drones to murder and special forces to kidnap and torture in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and across the African continent. It matters not at all that the First Lady is a shameless flack for Wal-Mart, that the Department of Justice prosecutes whistle blowers instead of war criminals, or that black military and diplomats like Susan Rice are up to their armpits in African blood.

The black political class at home and abroad is utterly self-interested. It cannot begin to mobilize black communities to demand higher wages, a massive jobs program to relieve unemployment, a new paradigm of urban economic development that isn't just moving poor people out of neighborhoods and richer ones in. It seems our egotistical black intelligentsia can't begin to make these things happen because foisting itself and its own advancement off as “representing” the black oppressed masses is the beginning and the end of who they are and what they do. They are not truly about the black diaspora and its plight, they do not truly care to ease the existential condition of his brothers, neighbours and friends.

For them, the election and and re-election of Barack Obama is the end of black history. The be all and end all of our history. Addressing black unemployment, pervasive economic injustice, opposing the neoliberal agenda of privatization and austerity put forth not just by the black president, but by an entire layer of black thinkers are, in their language not pragmatic or “realistic.”

So if our black leaders have anything to say about it, more years of Barack Obama means more years of black silence and irrelevance on the issues that matter most to our communities; on jobs and economic injustice. It means black leadership will wring its hands and do nothing as American federal policies drive the militarization of Africa. Our politicians will continue to philander and spinelessly acquiesce to whatever old might Uncle Sam says, we will genuflect at his very whim. We will not be the bold humans, bold leaders that stood down injustice and untruths in the past we will be the bandwagonists of a new age much to our demise!

Marcus Mosiah Garvey: Commemoration!

QUICK FACTS

NAME: Marcus Garvey
OCCUPATION: Civil Rights Activist

BIRTH DATE: August 17, 1887
DEATH DATE: June 10, 1940
PLACE OF BIRTH: St Ann's Bay, Jamaica
PLACE OF DEATH: London, England

BEST KNOWN FOR

Marcus Garvey was a proponent of the Black Nationalism and Pan-Africanism movements, inspiring the Nation of Islam and the Rastafarian movement.

Marcus Mosiah Garvey, Jr., ONH (17 August 1887 – 10 June 1940), was a Jamaican political leader, publisher, journalist, entrepreneur and orator who was a staunch proponent of the Black nationalism and Pan-Africanism movements, to which end he founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League (UNIA-ACL).

He founded the Black Star Line, part of the Back-to-Africa movement, which promoted the return of the African diaspora to their ancestral lands. Prior to the twentieth century, leaders such as Prince Hall, Martin Delany, Edward Wilmot Blyden, and Henry Highland Garnetadvocated the involvement of the African diaspora in African affairs. Garvey was unique in advancing a Pan-African philosophy to inspire a global mass movement and economic empowerment focusing on Africa known as Garveyism.

Promoted by the UNIA as a movement of African Redemption, Garveyism would eventually inspire others, ranging from the Nation of Islam to the Rastafari movement (which proclaims Garvey as a prophet). The intent of the movement was for those of African ancestry to "redeem" Africa and for the European colonial powers to leave it. His essential ideas about Africa were stated in an editorial in the Negro World entitled "African Fundamentalism", where he wrote: "Our union must know no clime, boundary, or nationality… to let us hold together under all climes and in every country…"