The Black Informant

Suburban huslahs.

Suburban huslahs.

Mauritania raises wages by 600%

Mauritania has raised its minimum wage by more than 600% - the latest in a series of measures aimed at preventing further trouble after three coup attempts…

…Former army officer Salih Walad Hananna, on trial along with more than 190 other suspects, has accused the government during his court appearances of not doing enough to help Mauritania’s people (more…)

New child labour laws help police act quickly

Libreville - Gabonese police picked up 60 foreign children working illegally on the streets of Libreville as well as 20 of their suspected employers in their first swoop under new legislation against the practice, officials said on Wednesday.

Deputy police commander Colonel Matthieu Douana said that all but four of the children held on Tuesday were girls, more than half from Benin but also from Togo, Nigeria or Ghana. The four boys were all Nigerian (more…)

SNC-Lavalin awarded $750M contract to build water treatment plant in Algeria

Construction giant SNC-Lavalin Group Inc. has been awarded a $750-million contract to design and build a water-treatment plant and pumping station in Algeria.

The facility will be built at Taksebt, about 100 kilometres east of the capital Algiers, and will include a 600,000 cubic-metre-per-day water treatment plant and pumping station (more…)

Wave of deadly clashes in Sudan’s Darfur region

Dozens of people have been killed or injured during a series of attacks by rebels or armed tribesmen against villages in Sudan’s war-scarred Darfur region, the United Nations Advance Mission in Sudan (UNAMIS) reported today.

In the deadliest incident, between 24 and 36 people were reported killed, and 26 others injured, when a convoy of rebels attacked the village of Al-Mallam in South Darfur state last Friday (more…)

Mugabe’s party riven with dissent as his power ebbs

ACCUSATIONS of violence and voter intimidation yesterday dogged internal polls held by Zimbabwe’s ruling party to select candidates for the general election in March…

Earlier this month, in a rare challenge to the party’s leadership, angry war veterans stormed a ZANU-PF meeting in a Mutare hotel to complain that candidates for this year’s parliamentary elections were being imposed on them, according to the weekly Manica Post. “There was chaos,” Shadreck Chipanga, who heads ZANU-PF’s co-ordinating committee in Manicaland province, told the newspaper (more…)

FAMU, Howard Students Aid Tsunami Relief

Rachel Melson sat in a state of utter disbelief over the winter break as she bore witness to the devastation caused by the tsunami that wreaked havoc from Africa to Asia…(more…)

HU TO CONSTRUCT CUTTING-EDGE BIOMEDICAL RESEARCH CENTER

Hampton University is planning the construction of a 64,000 square foot Biomedical Research Center on the university campus. Funded by HU and a federal government agency, the state-of-the-art facility will be an interdisciplinary center for biomedical researchers from both HU and the local region. (more…)

Track team nationally ranked (Jackson State U)

Thanks to a new attitude, new facilities and determined leadership, the Jackson State Tigers men’s track program has . . (more…)

NCCU RESEARCHERS FIRST TO CREATE MOLECULAR MODEL

Researchers at North Carolina Central University have created a molecular model they believe would lead to the development of a better pain reliever based on the active ingredient THC (tetrahydrocannabinol), which is found in marijuana. (more…) [Now don't ya'll don't start smokin' the stuff ]

New Society to Guide Young Men (Howard U)

At a time in Howard’s history where the enrollment rate of male students is at a low, the Society of Collegiate Black Men steps in to assume the responsibility of restoring the status of the traditional Howard man (more…)

Go to BlackCollegeWire.org for all of your black college updates!!

Here is an interesting piece that I came across recently:

More than 20 years after the AIDS epidemic arrived in the United States, 15 percent of African-Americans embrace the theory that government scientists created the disease to control or wipe out their communities, according to a study by Rand Corp. and Oregon State University.

More than one-quarter said they believed AIDS was produced in a government lab, and 12 percent believed it was created and spread by the CIA.

A slight majority said they believe a cure is being withheld from the poor. Forty-four percent said people who take new medicines for HIV are government guinea pigs, and 15 percent said AIDS is a form of genocide against black people. (more...)

Quite a few reports left out the following from the actual press release:

Significant numbers of African Americans believe in conspiracy theories about AIDS, and black men with such beliefs are less likely to use condoms as a precaution against spreading the HIV virus…(more…),

As the title suggests, the basic translation of this statistic/survey is simply that a good percentage of blacks today still do not trust most white people and government. For those of us that are in the over 30 crowd, we have witnessed such suspicious tragedies as the Tuskegee syphilis project, the murder of Martin Luther King Jr. , Malcolm X, and the Jim Crow laws of the south. More recently, the dismissal of 4 LAPD officers of charges for the senseless beating of a black motorist did very little to improve are trust of white people or “the system” (better known as the government). [Hey, let’s not forget if you were one of those that saw the movie Rosewood right before or during a work week. ].

There is one other element to this anti-trust mixture that I think is very important to mention. Many of our parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, etc. have also contributed to this negative trend as well. As a child, I remember all the stories I would hear various family members that would recall all of the times a white person did them wrong. As the stories were being told, I can remember my aunts in the room shaking their head while saying “um – um – um.” The men in the room would just say something like “see there! That’s why… (you fill in the blank)”.

To this very day, when I am telling a story about something that happened to me, I still have friends that will inquire weather or not the people that I am talking about were white or black as if the outcome would have been drastically different if it had been a white person (trust me, its is a hard habit to break ).

Whites on the other hand are guilty as well in this “lack of trust” conflict. One obvious place you will see this is when a black person enters into an environment and is not dressed like everyone else (who happens to be white). Regardless, when you compare the two groups, it is my belief that we as black people tip the scale in this game of distrust. I believe that one of the biggest issues that place us over the top is made up of two words: Affirmative Action.

Once a much needed plan to even the playing field in America, affirmative action has now turned iinto a vice that is used to further divide us as a nation (In short, affirmative action says two-fold: to whites it says that you can never be trusted to be fair to people of color. To blacks, it says that white people and/or the government are innately flawed when it comes to allowing us to have equal opportunities. In other words, “once a racist, always a racist“. In short, affirmative action can be seen as institutionalized distrust.

As I have said many times before, like anywhere else America may not be perfect, but it has certainly come a long way. Otherwise, I do not think that many of our brothers and sisters from Africa and other people of color would be still coming to this country to make a living.

The political “playas” that stand on the corner of Unending Black Struggle and Injustice Ave. would want to keep us in an unending state of distrust of white people so that they can more easily reap the spoils of white guilt while at the same time embolden their image as a so-called leader of black people.

I am not proposing some kind of great love fest between blacks and whites. Instead, what I realize is that at some point we are going to have to start trusting white people on a much greater scale than we have been in the past. Otherwise we will see ourselves once again at the back of the bus – this time , of the global economy.

“Defense attorney Johnnie Cochran tells us, ‘Race plays a part of everything in America.’ Whites, guilty. Blacks, innocent. Whites, bad. Blacks, good. A white woman clutches her purse when a black guy gets on an elevator. Racism! As a black lawyer enters a courtroom, someone mistakes him for a defendant. Racism! Cochran tells blacks, ‘remain hyper-sensitive. Turn these slights into assaults.” (excerpt from the book The Ten Things You Can’t Say in America by Larry Elder)

Here is an interesting piece that I came across recently:

More than 20 years after the AIDS epidemic arrived in the United States, 15 percent of African-Americans embrace the theory that government scientists created the disease to control or wipe out their communities, according to a study by Rand Corp. and Oregon State University.

More than one-quarter said they believed AIDS was produced in a government lab, and 12 percent believed it was created and spread by the CIA.

A slight majority said they believe a cure is being withheld from the poor. Forty-four percent said people who take new medicines for HIV are government guinea pigs, and 15 percent said AIDS is a form of genocide against black people. (more...)

Quite a few reports left out the following from the actual press release:

Significant numbers of African Americans believe in conspiracy theories about AIDS, and black men with such beliefs are less likely to use condoms as a precaution against spreading the HIV virus…(more…),

As the title suggests, the basic translation of this statistic/survey is simply that a good percentage of blacks today still do not trust most white people and government. For those of us that are in the over 30 crowd, we have witnessed such suspicious tragedies as the Tuskegee syphilis project, the murder of Martin Luther King Jr. , Malcolm X, and the Jim Crow laws of the south. More recently, the dismissal of 4 LAPD officers of charges for the senseless beating of a black motorist did very little to improve are trust of white people or “the system” (better known as the government). [Hey, let’s not forget if you were one of those that saw the movie Rosewood right before or during a work week. ].

There is one other element to this anti-trust mixture that I think is very important to mention. Many of our parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, etc. have also contributed to this negative trend as well. As a child, I remember all the stories I would hear various family members that would recall all of the times a white person did them wrong. As the stories were being told, I can remember my aunts in the room shaking their head while saying “um – um – um.” The men in the room would just say something like “see there! That’s why… (you fill in the blank)”.

To this very day, when I am telling a story about something that happened to me, I still have friends that will inquire weather or not the people that I am talking about were white or black as if the outcome would have been drastically different if it had been a white person (trust me, its is a hard habit to break ).

Whites on the other hand are guilty as well in this “lack of trust” conflict. One obvious place you will see this is when a black person enters into an environment and is not dressed like everyone else (who happens to be white). Regardless, when you compare the two groups, it is my belief that we as black people tip the scale in this game of distrust. I believe that one of the biggest issues that place us over the top is made up of two words: Affirmative Action.

Once a much needed plan to even the playing field in America, affirmative action has now turned iinto a vice that is used to further divide us as a nation (In short, affirmative action says two-fold: to whites it says that you can never be trusted to be fair to people of color. To blacks, it says that white people and/or the government are innately flawed when it comes to allowing us to have equal opportunities. In other words, “once a racist, always a racist“. In short, affirmative action can be seen as institutionalized distrust.

As I have said many times before, like anywhere else America may not be perfect, but it has certainly come a long way. Otherwise, I do not think that many of our brothers and sisters from Africa and other people of color would be still coming to this country to make a living.

The political “playas” that stand on the corner of Unending Black Struggle and Injustice Ave. would want to keep us in an unending state of distrust of white people so that they can more easily reap the spoils of white guilt while at the same time embolden their image as a so-called leader of black people.

I am not proposing some kind of great love fest between blacks and whites. Instead, what I realize is that at some point we are going to have to start trusting white people on a much greater scale than we have been in the past. Otherwise we will see ourselves once again at the back of the bus – this time , of the global economy.

“Defense attorney Johnnie Cochran tells us, ‘Race plays a part of everything in America.’ Whites, guilty. Blacks, innocent. Whites, bad. Blacks, good. A white woman clutches her purse when a black guy gets on an elevator. Racism! As a black lawyer enters a courtroom, someone mistakes him for a defendant. Racism! Cochran tells blacks, ‘remain hyper-sensitive. Turn these slights into assaults.” (excerpt from the book The Ten Things You Can’t Say in America by Larry Elder)

French President Jacques Chirac continued his insane suggestion that the whole world should be taxed and that the money would go towards fighting AIDS:

In a speech via video link to political and business leaders in the Swiss resort of Davos, he said at least 10 billion dollars (7.7 billion euros) a year was needed — up from six billion annually now — to stem the spread of the disease.

Chirac, prevented from flying to the World Economic Forum here through poor weather, said that despite huge efforts so far, “we are failing in the face of this terrible pandemic.” (more…)

He also said:

“… developed countries should also create tax incentives to stimulate private donations to charity.”

The United States has been doing this for years and still get criticized for being “stingy”!

Throughout Chirac’s passionate plea for the world to increase, he failed to mention the pile of crap that he had to wipe off his shoes from the Oil for Food scandal before making his speech. Throughout the war in Iraq, evidence has shown that France has been a key player in accepting payments from Saddam Hussein via the UN’s Oil for Food campaign. Millions of Iraqi citizens were forced to fend for themselves for much needed food and medicine while Saddam and his cohorts along with the governments of France, Germany, and Russia enjoyed the “fruits of their arrangement”. Another thing, the current laws of France are written as such where the president of France is automatically granted immunity from any type of investigation.

A little bit later, I will go into how European countries have been raping Africa (yet again) via the oil industry. Here again, you will see how millions of dollars go directly to hands of corrupt governments while ONCE AGAIN, the people who need it the most suffer.

Now Chirac wants to give them more money?

Developing…

French President Jacques Chirac continued his insane suggestion that the whole world should be taxed and that the money would go towards fighting AIDS:

In a speech via video link to political and business leaders in the Swiss resort of Davos, he said at least 10 billion dollars (7.7 billion euros) a year was needed — up from six billion annually now — to stem the spread of the disease.

Chirac, prevented from flying to the World Economic Forum here through poor weather, said that despite huge efforts so far, “we are failing in the face of this terrible pandemic.” (more…)

He also said:

“… developed countries should also create tax incentives to stimulate private donations to charity.”

The United States has been doing this for years and still get criticized for being “stingy”!

Throughout Chirac’s passionate plea for the world to increase, he failed to mention the pile of crap that he had to wipe off his shoes from the Oil for Food scandal before making his speech. Throughout the war in Iraq, evidence has shown that France has been a key player in accepting payments from Saddam Hussein via the UN’s Oil for Food campaign. Millions of Iraqi citizens were forced to fend for themselves for much needed food and medicine while Saddam and his cohorts along with the governments of France, Germany, and Russia enjoyed the “fruits of their arrangement”. Another thing, the current laws of France are written as such where the president of France is automatically granted immunity from any type of investigation.

A little bit later, I will go into how European countries have been raping Africa (yet again) via the oil industry. Here again, you will see how millions of dollars go directly to hands of corrupt governments while ONCE AGAIN, the people who need it the most suffer.

Now Chirac wants to give them more money?

Developing…

The New York Daily News reports:

Hip-hop radio station HOT 97 has sparked outrage across the city by airing a twisted song that shockingly mocks the 200,000 victims of the South Asian tsunami.

Before one airing of the song, the station’s news reader, Miss Info, who is of Asian descent, objected to the song, only to be attacked by Jones and her cohorts.

“That song is really offensive to me, and I opted not to involve myself,” Miss Info said.

Jones replied, “I know you feel you’re superior because you’re Asian, but you’re not.” Later, co-host Todd Lyn, incensed at Miss Info’s criticism, said, “I’m going to start shooting Asians.” (more…)

Here are just some of the lyrics:

And all at once, you can hear the screaming ch**ks

You can hear God laughing, ‘Swim you bi***es swim.’

[Chorus]

So now you’re screwed, it’s the tsunami,

And now your children will be sold to child slavery

Glad to see at least some black media outlets at least mentioned this incident. Otherwise, this is shameful.

I’ll let you guys do the commenting if you like.

A while ago, I did a series on the state of the public school system here in the US (check the menu to your right for the associated links to that series). Between the elections and other issues that I blogged on, I never had an opportunity to finish that series. Currently, I am in the process of gathering some additional information from a homeschool group.

I don’t know if I have mentioned it on this site or not, but I am the proud father of two beautiful children. Currently they are a tad bit too young for school, but my wife and I have already made the decision to homeschool both of them. One of the homeschool groups that I have been associated with is based out of Arizona area. They have an e-mail list that I have been a part of for while now. This has been a good way for me to meet other black parents who have been homeschooling their kids.

Because this group is made up of families from all over the US, they decided to have a meet-up in the Grand Canyon area this past summer. Unfortunately, we were unable to join them, but from what I was told, it was an experience of a lifetime. The picture above is from the trip to the Grand Canyon.

This part of my series will talk about the growing number of black families that are opting for this type of education for their children.