MF GALAXY

Below is a feature conversation recorded for Up Close, an interview progamme on Canada's Christian Television Service. The interviewer is sketch comic and independent filmmaker Neil Grahn. We met at CJSR and then reconvened at Sharifa's Sambusa House, a mainstay in the Somali community here, to discuss religion, spirituality, politics, social justice and human rights. PART ONE PART TWO PART THREE PART FOUR PART FIVE PART SIX

What hip hop artist wrote the following? "Stanley thus laid the groundwork for long Belgian rule over the Congo, a regime that we know today claimed between 8 million and 30 million African lives. The French, who did not recognize Leopold's private colonization, tried to lay claim to the region themselves. "Out of this dispute, the Berlin Conference of 1884 convened, at which 13 European countries and the U.S. recognized Central Africa's Congo region as Leopold's private property. "But the effects of the Berlin Conference were much broader. It went on to divide the continent into incomprehensible pieces, in a process now known as the Scramble for Africa. "The Europeans basically invaded, imposed a new map on Africa according to their geographical needs, divided tribes and communities that traditionally got along and confined traditional enemies inside new shared borders. "All these years later, border disputes are still unresolved, as in S...