Opinion
Still a long way to go for Haiti
By PAT WATSON
What to do about Haiti? According to the United Nations, $4.5 billion had been pledged, following the earthquake in January 2010, but only about half of that has found its way there through foreign aid organizations. Governments and aid organizations in charge of those pledges are holding back, refusing to release funds until they can get solid agreement from Haiti's leaders to control corruption and to put concrete plans in place for the recovery and other structures of governance. Or, as they call it these days, 'building capacity'.
Haiti claims on the other hand that many of these aid organizations used the country's tragedy to raise money but then refused to get the money to the people of Haiti.
Still a long way to go for Haiti
By PAT WATSON
What to do about Haiti? According to the United Nations, $4.5 billion had been pledged, following the earthquake in January 2010, but only about half of that has found its way there through foreign aid organizations. Governments and aid organizations in charge of those pledges are holding back, refusing to release funds until they can get solid agreement from Haiti's leaders to control corruption and to put concrete plans in place for the recovery and other structures of governance. Or, as they call it these days, 'building capacity'.
Haiti claims on the other hand that many of these aid organizations used the country's tragedy to raise money but then refused to get the money to the people of Haiti.
Time to celebrate and remember our history
By MURPHY BROWNE (Abena Agbetu)
My people, my people! It is that time of year again when many of us do the rounds, attending activities and events to recognize African History Month (sometimes labeled Black History Month, African Heritage Month or African Liberation Month). Call it what you will, it is the one month of the year when some of us remember to celebrate that we are African, Black, Negro or whatever word we feel comfortable using to identify ourselves.
Ivan Van Sertima’s books great reading for Black History Month
MURPHY BROWNE (Abena Agbetu)
We have come to reclaim the house of history. We are dedicated to the revision of the role of the African in the world's great civilizations, the contribution of Africa to the achievement of man in the arts and sciences. We shall emphasize what Africa has given to the world, not what it has lost.
Ivan Van Sertima, author of They Came Before Columbus: The African Presence in Ancient America, published in 1977.
Ivan Gladstone Van Sertima was born on January 26, 1935 in Kitty, Georgetown, Guyana. At the time of Van Sertima's birth, Kitty was a village near the capital city of Georgetown, British Guiana, which was then a colony possessed by the British Empire.
Economy should be based on our humanity
By PAT WATSON
The Occupy movement is still on the move. Government authorities in various jurisdictions may have taken down the tents and shut down the camps, but the movements are not those tents and camps. The Occupy movements are the people with the ideas and the understanding that the current paradigm of globalization and capitalism that sees the distribution of wealth skewed so that fewer and fewer can enjoy a decent livelihood and lifestyle is not working.
It's this simple: If the mass of people don't have the money to buy the goods that are being produced by these billionaire owners of the means of production, then everyone loses.
Is U.S. prison-building linked to Grade three children?
By LENNOX FARRELL
According to education officials in the U.S., such as Lesley Morrow, past president of the International Reading Association of America, projecting future needs for prison population beds is based, in some states, on the reading scores of children in Grade Three.
Is this true? Are prison officials basing the need for future prisons on the failure rate of Grade Three children?
What is no myth is that the exponential growth of a prison industrial complex in the United States is directly linked to the ending of slavery in the 19th century.
Black-focused students, not Black-focused inmates
By LENNOX FARRELL
Hell on Earth is what it took for Toronto's Black community to enlighten provincial and municipal politicians into effecting in Ontario, for the first time in the history of the Commonwealth, civilian control of policing: Ontario's SIU - the Special Investigative Unit.
However, by comparison, it took more than mere Hell on Earth to finally get a majority of trustees in an Ontario school board to support a grade-level Afri-centered alternative school.
Consider the year when civilian control of the police finally came to fruition - 1990. And the year, two decades later, when the Afri-centered school did - 2010!
Get moving – physical activity is good for your health
By Dr. CHRISTOPHER J. MORGAN
How are those New Year's Resolutions going? Did any involve exercising more? If they did (or didn't) keep reading. Last week, a patient of mine told me she just took her exercise regiment to a new level - it now involves two resistance training and two Zumba classes per week. I asked why? She said she and her boyfriend had gained nearly 10 pounds over the Christmas holidays and they were now engaged in a "Couples Challenge" to see who could lower their BMI (body mass index) over the next several weeks. She went on to say they are using BMI instead of pounds because "men lose weight more easily than women".
Fascinating history of Guyana needs to be taught
By MURPHY BROWNE (Abena Agbetu)
During the Napoleonic Wars in 1803, "the British imperial government conquered the Dutch colony of Berbice and took over the management of a number of presumed government slaves. These comprised persons on four estates and others - mainly artisans - in New Amsterdam, the colony's capital, who were known as winkel (that is "shop") slaves. The Colonial office had sent a circular dispatch to the governors on January 24, 1831 ordering them to set free all escheated slaves immediately".
Excerpt from Unprofitable Servants: Crown Slaves in Berbice Guyana 1803-1831 by Alvin O. Thompson, published in 2002.
Lose some weight, gain a new mayor?
By PAT WATSON
Just in time to take attention away from his cost-saving, service-cutting plans, as Toronto City Council was about to vote on the divisive 2012 budget, Mayor Rob Ford announced that he's going on a diet to lose 50 pounds by June.
Score one for the spin-doctors.
It looks like Ford's waning popularity is causing his handlers to take drastic measures to reshape his image, literally. The mayor, who at 178 centimetres (5'10") and 150 kilograms (330 pounds) is, in clinical terms, obese, will be scaling down while calling on Torontonians to give to local charities in support of his weight loss efforts.
