MF GALAXY

Since I was five years old--no kidding--I’ve been dreaming of being a father. And now, all praise is due to the Supreme , I have been blessed. Two days ago, my wife and I held in our arms for the first time our beautiful baby daughter, Yemayá. Our child was born under water (I don’t know about the three dollars and six dimes part, but yes, I’ve done my math), and so her name, Yemayá , is fitting indeed. In the Yoruba religion , Yemayá is the orisha (deity) of oceans . It’s said that some of those West Afrikans who survived the hell-ships of the European holocaust praised Yemayá for seeing them alive to the other side. The Yoruba Yemayá is also associated with motherhood and the protection of the family. We pray both will be true of our daughter. We hope our daughter, born in the hour of Ancestor-I, will grow up to be a proud, strong, intelligent woman who “makes stand those who weep, who reveals those who hide their faces, and who lifts up those who sink down” (Per em Hru LXX...

Al Jazeera reports : "A three-year-old book by the radical author Noam Chomsky remains at the top of the Amazon.com's bestsellers list, after a plug by Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan president, during a UN speech last week. " Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance , published in 2003, shot up from 26,000 to number one after Chavez urged Americans to read it. Chavez had held up Chomsky's book and said Americans should read it 'instead of watching Superman movies', to learn the truth about the abuses of the US government. "The popular online company said the 2003 book remained its biggest seller on Sunday.Chavez had recommended it as 'an excellent book to help us understand what has been happening in the world throughout the 20th century ... and the greatest threat looming over our planet'. "Chavez's railed against the US in his speech saying 'the hegemonic pretensions of the American empire are placing at risk th...

...and in the US, some folks have freaked out. But for crying out loud, Bush calls people "evil," I mean, capital-E "Evil" on a regular basis. Don't dish it out if you can't ( etc .), Bush-baby. Any way, other folks in the US have calmly reported the event . Check out Democracy Now! 's appraisal, including a long video/audio clip of Chavez's speech, which begins very well, with obvious humour and irony, much to the delight of many in the General Assembly. I guess it all comes down to this: If y ou have to have it explained to you, you'll never understand. I suppose that all us meat-eaters would probably resent how talking cows would talk about us, too. Here's a partial transcript courtesy of DN! : "...the American empire is doing all it can to consolidate its hegemonic system of domination, and we cannot allow them to do that. We cannot allow world dictatorship to be consolidated. The world tyrant’s statement -- cynical, hypocriti...

BBC News reports: "Pope Benedict XVI has paid tribute to an Italian nun killed in Somalia who is reported to have forgiven her attackers as she lay dying. "Sister Leonella Sgorbati was attacked, along with her bodyguard, outside the hospital in Mogadishu where she worked. Some suspect the shooting was connected to recent remarks by the Pope which caused anger across the Islamic world." So the pope makes some ugly remarks. That's bad (Correction as of Oct. 2: Garvey's Ghost demonstrates clearly that Pope Benedict, in fact, did not make the remarks attributed to him . Thanks, Br. Sondjata, and sorry to the Pope (no, I'm not being sarcastic). And someone else in Somalia kills someone else for those remarks? That's freaking monstrous . Who on earth can support this? Obviously not 99.9% of Muslims, any more than, say, 99.9% of Christians directly supported the Ku Klux Klan or the Nazis. But--and let me put it frankly-- this barbaric shit has got to stop. Th...

BBC News reports: "Venezuela has made a formal complaint to the US authorities and the United Nations after its foreign minister was detained at a New York airport. "The US state department has apologised to Nicolas Maduro who was detained for 90 minutes at New York's JFK airport as he travelled home. He had been attending this week's UN General Assembly meeting. He said he was verbally abused and strip-searched in what he said was a 'flagrant breach of international law'. "President Hugo Chavez described Mr Maduro's detention as a provocation.... 'We were detained during an hour and a half, threatened by police with being beaten,' he told reporters at Venezuela's mission to the UN. 'We hold the US government responsible.' "US authorities initially denied Mr Maduro had been detained and his documents seized, saying he had simply been asked to go through a second security screening. The US state department later confirmed t...

Friday night, I'm speaking at the Unveiling Africa conference at 6:30, and then I'm getting on a chartered jet, followed by a hovercraft, jet ski and dog-kayak to make it over to perform at the Roar spoken word festival. Later on that night I'll finish reading manuscripts (start reading manuscripts) for the Three Day Novel contest. Kot- tam.

Nigeria’s computational pioneer Chukwurah Philip Emeagwali downloads himself to E-Town By Minister Faust, for Vue Weekly , 2006 September 21 The Unveiling Africa Conference University of Alberta September 21-23 WHEN: Saturday, September 23, 7 pm Keynote Speaker Philip Emeagwali WHERE: Dinwoodie Lounge, 2nd floor Students Union Building, U of A HOW MUCH: $20 ($15 for students) Unveiling Africa Website “Africa.” In Western culture, the word fornicates with the word “ignorance” in two ways: first, as the (sometimes) unspoken belief that Africa is the world’s intellectual and cultural “heart of darkness,” and second, as the reality of Western ignorance about the world’s second largest continent. It’s so common in North America for folks to conceive of Africa as a single country that it’s actually rare, in conversation, to hear someone acknowledge that Africa contains 54 countries. It’s far more common to hear phrases such as “I visited London, Paris, and Africa,” which reduce the world’s ...

From an Africa Action report carried on The Black Commentator : "During President Bill Clinton’s trip to Africa in 1998, he stopped in Kigali, Rwanda, to deliver an apology for not having done 'as much as we could' to stop the genocide in 1994. He announced to an audience at the Kigali airport, '[A]ll over the world there were people like me sitting in offices, day after day after day, who did not fully appreciate the depth and the speed with which you were being engulfed by this unimaginable terror.'[3] "In fact, there exists a great deal of evidence to suggest that detailed information on the scope of the genocide was indeed available to the U.S. – both before and during the massacres in Rwanda. Reports suggesting a high likelihood of massive ethnic violence had been available even during the early 1990s. In January 1994, U.S. intelligence analysts had predicted that in case of renewed conflict in Rwanda, 'the worst-case scenario would involve one ha...

"The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and Nigeria 's northeastern state of Borno have signed a 700 million naira (about 5.4 million U.S. dollars) project implementation agreement to address the problem of girl education in the next five years.... "Mohammed Jalloh, assistant country representative of UNICEF Field Office in the state capital Bauchi, said the signing of the pact was the 'right step toward achieving the Millennium Development Goal of universal primary education.'"

The InterWorld Radio News Bulletin of Sept. 12 reports: "Islamists who closed down a Somali radio station for playing love songs and other music have allowed it back on air. Radio Jowhar was ordered to close on Sunday because its programmes were considered un-Islamic. Radio Jowhar can now broadcast only news bulletins, readings from the Quran and Islamic lectures. The Islamists have imposed strict religious rule in Somalia since taking control of much of southern Somalia." Background on the original shut-down of Radio Jowhar by the fundamentalists: " Jowhar resident Ali Musse said closing the radio station was a violation of freedom. 'This directive is like the Taliban,' Musse told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. 'It is censorship against independent media and freedom of expression.'" " The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) strongly condemns the closure on Sunday, June18, 2006 of the local sub-division of the ...

Greg Palast writes: "Anne Coulter says we’re 'Godless' — we 'liberals.' And by 'liberals,' she means anyone who wants to keep the government out of our underpants, out of Iraq, and out of the business of helping Big Business shoplift America. "It’s time someone took on the blonde bully. "Anne, I realize yesterday was special day for you, releasing your book on June 6 — 06-06-06. "Going through it, I must, admit, is heavy going: Godless is a 300-page brick of solid meanness and pin-head hatreds packaged like a fashion magazine: Big Brother wears Prada. "You accuse those who don’t sign on to your list of prejudices as the Lord’s enemies. That’s not original, Anne: the Taliban thought of it before you and they too were partial to dressing in black. "You want to talk about Godless? OK, let’s go: "Would the Lord lie us into a war? "Would the Lord let thousands drown in New Orleans while chilling at a golf resort? ...

(Thanks to Br. John Y. for this.) Tyrone Taborn writes: “You may not have heard of Dr. Mark Dean. And you aren’t alone. But almost everything in your life has been affected by his work. “See, Dr. Mark Dean is a Ph.D. from Stanford University . H e is in the National Hall of Inventors. He has more than 30 patents pending. He is a vice president with IBM. Oh, yeah. And he is also the architect of the modern-day personal computer . Dr . Dean holds three of the original nine patents on the computer that all PCs are based upon. And, Dr. Mark Dean is an African American. “So how is it that we can celebrate the 20th anniversary of the IBM personal computer without reading or hearing a single word about him? Given all of the pressure mass media are under about negative portrayals of African Amer icans on television and in print, you would think it would be a slam dunk to highlight someone like Dr. Dean. “Somehow, though, we have managed to miss the shot. History is cruel when it comes to ...

A response to the Sept.11, 2001 Terror Attacks in NYC and DC By Minister Faust Originally broadcast on The Terrordome Afrika All-World News Service , 2001 September 19 INTRO The following is, without question, the most difficult piece of writing I have ever created for The Afrika All-World News Service . It is difficult because the circumstances that motivate are so deeply upsetting, for reasons that will become clear. And it is difficult because I am aware of the repercussions that I may face for giving voice to what many people feel or believe, but think that they cannot say. Still, the Honourable Malcolm X teaches us that “If you’re afraid to tell the truth, you don’t even deserve freedom.” This programme has aired on CJSR FM-88 since 1991, and it has been dedicated since its inception to discussing the truth about the Afrikan world, about anti-imperialism and the pro-democracy movement that is covered up or misrepresented elsewhere. That will not change tonight. This editorial conc...

The massacres or even genocide in Darfur, of course, are only part of the Sudanese death toll . The Sudanese civil war which preceded this horror resulted in the deaths of about 1.5 million people . While Israel's attack on Lebanon killed over a thousand people, the mass murder in Sudan is, as my title suggests (if in a cold, mathematical way), 15,000 times worse. Many people, including myself, have been outraged by the repression and violence doled out by the governments of Iran, Ba'athist Iraq, pre- and post-Taliban Afghanistan, Israel, Turkey, and so on. It's long overdue for some of those people not only to express but to act upon outrage over the Sudanese government's colossal engine of human misery. Whether as in Sudan's case the crisis is cloaked in Islamism or racialism or regionalism, or as elsewhere it's cloaked in Zionism or Americanism or Maoism or capitalism or Whitesupremacy or patriotism (or combo-platters thereof), the central problem is the sam...

"At 24, M.K. Asante Jr. already wears atop his dreadlocks the hats of award-winning film producer, author, journalist and poet. And he's adding another —- professor —- as he begins teaching creative writing, screenwriting and African American cinema at Morgan State University for the fall semester. "The producer of an award-winning 2005 documentary about the African diaspora, 500 Years Later , has joined Morgan State's English and Language Arts department alongside Chair Dolan Hubbard, who says the department is pushing for a 'multi-genre approach' by incorporating screenwriting, journalism and literature into its 'English department for the 21st century.' "Hubbard said Asante, who will also be teaching a spring class about hip-hop, represents '360 degrees of blackness' because of his ability to tell the story of black triumph in a variety of forms, such as poetry and film. "'He represents the blend of the hip-hop generation co...

How many Muslims have been kicked off of planes for the crime of FWM (flying while Muslim)? What about people who have t-shirts with Arabic phrases? And now, get this, Air Canada has kicked off a Hasidic Jewish man for... praying? How about we just kick off the ninnies and knee-knockers, already? I agree with Fish Griwkowsky.

Yep. Novels written in three days by twelve crazy people. Judged by three crazy people (including me). The Edmonton Sun writes: "The Bachelor showed off Whyte Avenue as a fine place for romance, amid the sidewalk gum spots and keg apes. Canadian Idol had theatrical locals praying for their amigo's high-end national karaoke run. "If successful, the new idea of turning the long-running tradition of marathon book writing into a dog (or gong) show has vastly more creative potential than any combination of on-camera uber-dating and cover-singing. Namely, the seeds of permanent literary achievement. "The goal of Book Television's 3-Day Novel Contest, playing out live this weekend at South Point Chapters on Calgary Trail and 32 Avenue is to ease 12 writers from across Canada through the same number of new, 90-page novels.... "After three days of live updates on national television, the novels will be read and judged by Vancouver's Jenn Farrell and two of ou...