Friday, November 28, 2008
Saturday, November 22, 2008
Looking at the stars
Professor Ivan van Sertimer, author of Black Women in Antiquity and They Came before Columbus among others, wrote an article of the name The Lost Sciences of Africa in which he argues that the Dogon had a vast modern knowledge of the solar system, and indeed the Dogon knew of the surface of the moon and the characteristics of Sirius B, beyond the awareness of western astronomers.
Even though Professor Ivan van Sertimer and Hunter Adams, African Observers of the Universe - the Sirius Question, find the Dogon's observations intriguing, Robert Temple, a member of the Royal Astronomical Society of Great Britain, thinks that the Dogon possibly could have had the information passed to them by extraterrestrials! An extremely eurocentric view backed up by an astronomer by the name of Carl Sagan who thinks the Dogon got enlightenment from European explorers; exactly as other Europeans suggested that the pyramids and the Great Zimbabwe were built with help from extraterrestrials. Once again Africans will point the Europeans wrong as they have evidence on their side. Maybe the Dogon are the descendants of the ancient Egyptians, and they passed on their knowledge through generations as they've migrated to Mali. Anyhow, they have their place in African history.
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Wise part of my roots
Monday, November 10, 2008
Bless thy soul Miriam Makeba
Miriam Zenzi Makeba was born in Johannesburg on 4 March, 1932, to a Swazi mother and a Xhosa father, who died when she was only 6. She had a talent for singing even as a child when she sang at the Kilmerton Training Institute which she attended for 8 years.
The rest is history one can say. Miriam Makeba began singing, naturally, starting in an amateur group but quicly became a professional when she formed her own group, The Skylarks. She was a speaker against apartheid, and she married the well known African Trinidadian civil rights activist and Black Panther Stokely Carmichael. A woman with a cause.
Her swinging rhythm is characterized by a blend of jazz and South African melodies, and she is one of the best known African artist worldwide.
I remember hearing her music as a little girl from my parents. One song she sang with her group The Skylarks was Inkomo Zodwa; I will never shake that song off my mind. Incredible is a too small word for such a great woman. Bless her soul.
Sunday, November 9, 2008
Memorable pictures; meaning of life
Saturday, November 8, 2008
My freedom of speech
The politicians are inclined to be so mechanical. Machines who have made up an opinion about almost everything, and memerize it, before they address the people. Along the way they forget the tiniest or most fragile minority/minorities. Persons who do not have a place to call a home, whose place is different everyday, who are most likely not to break the vicious circle to create a steady life, and a people who had a culture and a way of life, which do not correspond to the modern life of the western society, are being placed in reservations in dire conditions. In some places Native Americans have a life expectancy which is lower than any country of the world, a suicide rate among teens which is 150% higher than the national average, close to total population living below the poverty line, and this ferocious reality continues to persist.
I am sure most people are mortified that this hell thrives in a powerful nation as the United States. But nothing is to be heard or seen among the ones in power.
People tend to ask questions to the politicians about matters which involve themselves, naturally (we are just humans), while others get left behind.
Democratic countries pride themselves of having the glorious rights upheld in their constitutions since many centuries, and others, decades, ago; of freedom of speech for example. Yet this magnificent right is not used to the extent one may want. The dream behind this right of saying whatever one wants is living out too slowly, and used for topics not so significant. Freedom of speech should be used to pressure the government and the change-makers among other matters, instead of ending up with voices sinking in the mire of arrogance and conservatism.
As humans we must ask ourselves if it is not time for making a change starting with the man in the mirror; change, whether it be locally or globally, speaking up on paper or with your voice, giving the homeless you pass on your way home the 30 bucks you would have used on a pair of new shoes or dedicating your life to helping others. Either way is just as important. The way has been steep and it will keep on being that but we will learn to strengthen ourselves.
Have a blessed morning, afternoon or evening to all.
Great websites
Republic of Lakotah
Homeless
Native Americans
Let America be America again
In the spirit of Obama, here's a poem by Langston Hughes and it is called "Let America be America again":
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.
(America never was America to me.)
Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed -
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.
(It never was America to me.)
O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.
(There's never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this 'homeland of the free.')
Say who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?
I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek -
And finding only the same old stupid plan.
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.
I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one's own greed!
I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean -
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today - O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.
Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream
In that Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That's made America the land it has become.
O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home -
For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,
And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa's strand I came
To build a 'homeland of the free.'
The free?
Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we've dreamed
And all the songs we've sung
And all the hopes we've held
And all the flags we've hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay -
Except the dream that's almost dead today.
O, let America be America again -
The land that never has been yet -
And yet must be - the land where every man is free.
The land that's mine - the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME -
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.
Sure, call me any ugly name you choose -
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!
O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath -
America will be!
Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers,
The mountains and the endless plain -
All, all the stretch of these great green states -
And make America again!
Arising
At times I wish my thoughts would be released
Flowing through all barriers at ease
And hit the hypocrites killin’ Jah people across all HIM seas
Realizing their faults and wickedness down on their knees
Taking back all their expensive misinventions and disease
The righteous people nah need your dreadful expertise
It breaks down the precious mind, oh these heresies
Their mentality so cruel it sets your consciousness in position ‘freeze’
When everyone is paralyzed, who to assist the Sudanese?
I can hear them cry and wheeze
Please oh please..
Unfolding the truth which has never been televised
Perpetrates destructive lies
Deceives and despoil the wise
But we arise, arise, arise
Copyright Ras Love Princess
Sunday, November 2, 2008
Nəgusä Nägäst
Selassie I's royalty goes back to King Solomon and Makeda, the Queen of Sheba, who brought forth a son called Menelik. Menelik I (Ebna la-Hakim, "Son of the Wise") ascended the throne after the death of Makeda and took the title of Emperor and King of Kings of Ethiopia and if one reads the Kebra Negast it tells of Menelik I taking the Ark of the Covenant and bringing it to Ethiopia where it remains this day. That makes HIM Haile Selassie the 225 link of King Solomon.