The Original BRO-Log: Minister Faust Speaks

TONIGHT ON THE TERRORDOME: Chika Udok, Nigerian Artist in E-Town

2008-07-09T08:22:00.013-06:00

CJSR FM88
www.cjsr.com
6 PM Mountain Time

Her name is Chika Udok.

Udok is a Nigerian visual artist living in Edmonton. She studied at tg University of Nigeria at Nsukka under acclaimed Ghanaian artist and professor El Anatsui. She's young, but already achieving excellence in painting and wall-mounted paint-sculptures.

Her work speaks to crises affecting Nigeria, women, the various Afrikan communities in Canada, and also the beauties of the Afrikan and natural worlds. She’s recently turned her house into a gallery, which features her most recent show for the next month or so.

If you’d like to see the work that’s about to be described, email her at chikamodum@yahoo.com.

El Anatsui

“El Anatsui was born 1944 in Anyako, Ghana. El earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Sculpture and a Postgraduate Diploma in Art Education from the University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, Ghana. He is Professor of Sculpture at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, where he has lectured since 1975. He exhibited at the 1990 Venice Biennale, where he received an honorable mention and was included in the Johannesburg Biennale in 1995 as well as the Gwanju Bienniale, Gwanju, South Korea, 2004.

"His most recent solo exhibition Gawu has toured Europe, Asia and North America. He is included in the anthology exhibition Africa Remix, which has toured Dusseldorf, London and Paris and will travel to Tokyo and other cities in 2006/7. His work is in numerous public and private collections including: Asele Institute, The British Museum, Centre Pompidou, de Young Museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum Kunst Palast, The Newark Museum, Nigeria National Art Gallery, Segataya Museum and the Smithsonian Institution.”

In 1993 I visited an artists’ workshop in Nairobi while visiting my father’s home country.

I saw there why so much of what passes in the West for Afrikan art is such absolute garbage. In little more than a hallway of a chop-shop, an assembly-line of men hacked pieces of wood into animal forms such as giraffes and rhinos, eventually smoothing them before finishing them with felt markers. Similar shops made “tribal masks” and other patronising, hackwork kitsch.

Sure, I could blame Western buyers and the media culture that made them think such “rustic” feebleries were the best the continent had to offer. But I had to admit, so long as the supply existed, the demand would not dry up. If someone made money from the stereotype, the stereotype could never die.

And that’s the kind of junk you’ll see at many pavilions representing Afrikan countries in the upcoming Heritage Days Festival in Edmonton. Whereas pavilions for other countries will display hundreds of finely-wrought wooden and metal sculptures, many of the continental displays will be peddling items that belong in the trash.

My advice: never buy that stuff. Ask the vendors to bring in higher-quality work. And when you see beautifully-made art, support the sellers, and support the artists.

TONIGHT ON THE TERRORDOME: Tokunbo Oke on how European Capitalism Underdeveloped Afrika

2008-07-02T14:45:00.016-06:00

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6 PM Mountain Time

Tokunbo Oke is a historian and member of ALISC, the African Liberation Support Campaign Network.

“ALISC is a UK-based solidarity group set up by Africans forced int o exile in the 1980s because they opposed Structural Adjustment Programmes. ALISC supports groups in Africa fighting to get power into the hands of the African majority, which means out of the hands of transnational profit-making companies, international banks and the wealthy African elite.

"One of ALISC Network’s jobs is to publicise what these groups are doing - and to expl ain the history of resistance in Africa, which hardly anyone knows. During slavery and colonial occupation, African women and men didn’t sit around waiting for someone to save them - they fought.”

When many people look at Afrika, they see only the present, and assume the present explains everything about the past. But a glance at 19th Century Greece would say little about the wonders of ancient Athens.

So is it with the Motherland, where five centuries of European holocaust have almost entirely obliterated our understanding not only of the diverse and magnificent civilisations of ancient and medieval Afrika, but our understanding of just how devastating has been human trafficking in the tens of millions, continent-wide occupation, economic exploitation, and proxy wars.

Tokunbo Oke spoke April 23, 2004 in London to explain how—and why—European capitalism underdeveloped Afrika.

PART TWO:
The conclusion to Michael Parenti
on Slavery, Imperialism and Racial Supremacy

Last week on the show, courtesy of Michael Parenti, we learned how racial supremacy is not the simple matter of polite, liberal and conservative myths.

Racial supremacy is not simply the use of racial slurs; it’s not so-called “reverse racism.” It’s not dispelled by government-sponsored phrases about multiculturalism, token roles on television or in industry, ahistorical quoting of Martin Luther King’s most-abused speech, and it’s certainly not dispelled by the candidacy of one man who has become the myth-making flag-waver for corporate, military, mercenary, imperial America.

Racial supremacy is an organised political, economic and social system which keeps power in the hands of the globally racial few over the rest of humanity. It uses every means available, from academic, military and religious means to media, social networking, employment, housing and more.

It no longer needs to advertise “Whites only.” In fact, it can be very effectively served by a selection of coloured collaborators including movie stars, former generals and oil executives, and Chicago lawyers.

The system also serves to keep down millions of poor Whites in the United States, offering them only marginally better material opportunities, but a potent psychic one: the belief that they’re better than someone else. When you have nothing else, that counts for a lot.

Tonight, Michael Parenti lays out the rest of his case for explaining racial supremacy, with reference to Plato and Aristotle, modern academics and George H. W. Bush.

Nader on Obama: "He is not willing to tackle the white power structure"

2008-06-25T21:38:00.008-06:00

Ralph Nader called out Obama, AGAIN, and deservedly so. Will Obama have the guts to debate him? I think not.

Nader said the following:

"Senator Obama said earlier today that I haven't been paying attention to his campaign.

Actually, I have.

And it's clear from Senator Obama's campaign that he is not willing to tackle the white power structure - whether in the form of the corporate power structure or many of the super-rich - who are taking advantage of 100 million low income Americans who are suffering in poverty or near poverty.

Senator Obama is opposed to single payer national health insurance.

Why?

Because he favors the health insurance giants over the millions of Americans in poverty or near poverty who are uninsured or under-insured. Eighteen thousand Americans die every year because they cannot afford health insurance, according to the Institute of Medicine.

Senator Obama wants to expand the military budget which is loaded with waste, fraud and abuse - instead of cutting it and investing the long ignored peace dividend in the inner cities with good jobs and public works - including schools, clinics, and libraries.

Why?

Because he fears and favors those thousands of lobbyists in charge of enlarging the military industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned us against.

Senator Obama says he favors a living wage. But he doesn't say he would immediately increase the minimum wage to $10 an hour, which is the equivalent of the 1968 minimum wage adjusted for inflation - because by doing so he would offend the big corporations who exploit labor in places like Wal-Mart and fast food chains. (The minimum wage needs to be increased immediately, not phased in over a number of years, as Senator Obama would have it.)

So Senator Obama, let's get specific.

We're looking for deeds, not, as Shakespeare put it, words, words, mere words.

Your public career, which I have also been paying attention to, is long on words, and short on action when it comes to consumer protection, cracking down on corporate crime, curbing the violence of toxic environmental racism, and extending clean, affordable public transit, among other issues.

For the purposes of the here and now, three things:

One, why don't you support single payer national health insurance, which is supported by a majority of doctors and the American people?

Two, why do you favor expanding the military budget which is replete with waste, fraud and abuse?

And three, why don't you come out and support an immediate increase of the minimum wage to $10 an hour?

When can we expect the authenticity of hope and change?"

Your contribution could be doubled. Public campaign financing may match your contribution total up to $250.

Seven Things You Can't Say in an American Election

2008-06-25T19:51:00.003-06:00

And, for those whose hopes for a better America are so strong and so heartfelt that they've placed their hopes in Barack Obama, I strongly suggest you examine the following:

Part 1 of Ralph Nader on Barack Obama: “It is Quite Clear He is a Corporate Candidate from A to Z”

Part 2 of Ralph Nader on Barack Obama: “It is Quite Clear He is a Corporate Candidate from A to Z”

Part 3 of Ralph Nader on Barack Obama: “It is Quite Clear He is a Corporate Candidate from A to Z”

TONIGHT ON THE TERRORDOME: Michael Parenti on Slavery, Imperialism and Racial Supremacy

2008-06-25T09:49:00.007-06:00

CJSR FM88
www.cjsr.com
6 PM Mountain Time

The slave holocaust and imperialism were two the greatest crimes of history, both of which were inflicted by the Euro-American empire on the civilisations of Africa. Over the course of three centuries, enslavement depopulated the continent of close to 50 million people, according to historian G. Stavrianos in his book Global Rift.

When that horror finally ended, Europe began part 2: military occupation and colonization to exploit the vast natural and mineral resources of the richest continent on the planet. The Germans committed genocide against the Herero nation of

Namibia

, killing three-quarters of them.

In Congo alone, the Belgians murdered between 8 and 10 million people to extract rubber, and in the course of their slaughters formed miniature mountains of human hands from their amputated victims. As wars for independence proceeded and achieved state power, European and American governments guaranteed instability by fomenting coups and commissioning assassinations, as with the White House-ordered murder of Patrice Lumumba, Congo’s first prime minister.

To this day, that country suffers under the weight of centuries of exploitation, a civil war inspired by planetary scramble for Congo’s resources, including the world’s largest supply of coltan, a mineral used in almost all DVD players, cell phones and computers. That civil war has killed more than 5 million people.

So how is it that so much blood can be spilled for coltan, for rubber, for diamonds and more? The profit is obvious. What is sometimes less obvious is whose blood is being spilled. To address that, tonight we’ll hear from Michael Parenti, a tireless activist-academic whose work focuses on the abuse and exploitation of the many for the profits of the few.

Michael Parenti has taught at many colleges and universities in the

United States

and abroad. He is a celebrated lecturer whose humour and anecdotes have delighted audiences across the world, in person and via broadcast. Over 250 of his articles have appeared in scholarly journals, political periodicals and popular magazines and newspapers. Michael Parenti is author of seventeen books on the power of media, political elites and the wealthy. His writings have been translated into 17 languages including Bangla, Chinese, Greek, Korean, Farsi, Polish, Serbian, and Turkish. His books include:

The Terrorism Trap, September 11 and Beyond

Democracy for the Few

To Kill a Nation, The Attack on Yugoslavia

and the Pulitzer-nominated The Assassination of Julius Caesar: A People’s History of Ancient Rome.

TONIGHT ON THE TERRORDOME: Actor-director Clark Johnson on Hollywood, filmmaking, race and Obama

2008-06-18T08:24:00.019-06:00

CJSR FM88
www.cjsr.com
6 PM Mountain Time

Clark Johnson is an actor and director of vast experience. He’s best known for playing Det. Meldrick Lewis on seven seasons of NBC’s Homicide: Life on the Street, but one of his earliest roles was in two episodes of CTV’s The Littlest Hobo.

He also directed the blockbuster feature film SWAT which earned $207 million worldwide, television shows such as The Shield, Soul Food, NYPD Blue, The West Wing, Third Watch and La Femme Nikita, and the forthcoming feature Chinese Wall.

He has numerous Canadian connections, having lived in Canada since his teen years, once played in the CFL, and later acted in Canadian feature films On Their Knees and Rude, and Canadian television programmes including ENG and Night Heat, and the TV movie The Planet of Junior Brown.

His sister is Canadian jazz singer Molly Johnson, who was recently inducted into the Order of Canada.

Clark Johnson recently starred in season 5 of HBO’s The Wire as newspaper editor Gus Haynes, and directed the first two and the final episode of that series.

Stay tuned in the weeks to come on The Terrordome, when I’ll be presenting a feature series on The Wire, and what it says about race, policing and power in the United States.

I’ll be speaking with actors, directors, writers and producers of the series, as well as sociologists, political scientists, journalists, critics and others who are keenly interested in the impact of a show which has routinely been called the best American television series ever.

Clark Johnson spoke with me by telephone from his home in Toronto on June 3, when we discussed his career, Hollywood, filmmaking and race, and his work for the Barack Obama campaign. During our discussion, Johnson refers to “Simon,” namely, David Simon, the creator and executive producer of The Wire.

We started by discussing Johnson’s connections to his adopted home of Canada. I later asked Johnson about his work as a special effects artist on the film The Dead Zone, the 1983 adaptation of the Stephen King novel by Canadian director David Cronenberg. Along the way, Johnson discusses a sad truth of Hollywood—its continued racial exclusion.

Clark Johnson informed me during our discussion that he had been campaigning to help Barack Obama win the presidential nomination of the US Democratic Party. I asked him what he thought about how Barack Obama had dealt with Reverend Jeremiah Wright, the influential Chicago pastor whom Obama used a springboard for his political ascendancy, only to condemn him when it became expedient.

ROZENA MAART

Last fall, South African novelist Rozena Maart visited Edmonton on a book tour with her novel The Writing Circle. She joined us on The Terrordome for a discussion at that time. Rozena Maart has practiced psychoanalysis and worked as an English professor.

In 1987 when she was 24, Maart was nominated for the “Woman of the Year” award hosted in Johannesburg, for her work opposing violence against women and for starting, with four women, the first Black feminist organization in Cape Town, Women Against Repression [W.A.R]. She has been a researcher and writer for the Canadian Panel on Violence against Women.

Maart spoke in November with another African-Canadian programmer at FM88, Yo’vella Mizraahi-Ellis of the CJSR programme News Room. She discussed with Maart the vicious reality that fighting Whitesupremacy in apartheid and neo-apartheid South Africa did very little to address the violence and repression of malesupremacy.

Please nominate DOCTOR BRAIN

2008-06-01T20:59:00.005-06:00

Please nominate my novel From the Notebooks of Doctor Brain for the Carl Brandon Awards. For information about my book, please check the sidelinks with interviews and more! But what are the Carl Brandon Awards, you ask? Read on, gentle ones:

The Carl Brandon Parallax Award is given to works of speculative fiction created by a person of color. Nominees must provide a brief statement self-identifying as a person of color; creators unwilling to do so will not be considered for this award. This Award includes a $1000 cash prize.

The Carl Brandon Kindred Award is given to any work of speculative fiction dealing with issues of race and ethnicity; nominees may be of any racial or ethnic group. This Award includes a $1000 cash prize.

We are now accepting nominations for the 2008 awards for books published in 2007. The nominations period runs through July 2008.

The Passion of Reverend Ruckus

2008-05-29T07:27:00.004-06:00

Some people hate satire. If you're one of them, you definitely don't want to watch this video.

Fela Anikulapo Kuti: Army Arrangement

2008-05-26T20:03:00.003-06:00

Fela was brilliant. Band leader, singer, lyricist, xylophone player, keyboard player, sax player, creator of his own political party and candidate for the presidency of Nigeria.

He lived a huge life--huge with artistic glory, and huge with mistakes. But in many ways he's a hero to me: part Duke Ellington, part Rick James, part Thomas Sankara.

Some say that James Brown influenced him, but experts and witnesses claim that Brown's drummer copied the work of Tony Allen (Allenko), co-creator of Afrobeat and Fela's drum/percussion leader.

Enjoy "Army Arrangement." Typical brilliant Fela.

Minister Faust performance poetry: "'Hug' is Not a Verse-itile Word"

2008-05-26T16:59:00.005-06:00

I wrote this poem at the end of 2001 for a woman I wanted to date. The poem worked out in the short term (we dated) although things didn't work out between us in the long term (we were like TNT).

It wasn't the first time I'd gone through that poetry-date-relationship-breakup cycle, either. Anyway, it's all for the best as I later met the woman who would become my wife and then we got married and are raising a daughter and we're all happy although I write fewer poems.

Anyhoo... the poem. Yeah, I was asked by CBC's Christine Chomiak to perform it for the network's late night alt-culture show ZeD-TV, and I now present it to you all. And don't freakin' steal it to score with. Make your own freakin' moves (and movies).

Minister Faust speaks against Top Ten war propaganda terms

2008-05-26T16:54:00.001-06:00

In January 2003, I spoke at a rally in Edmonton, Alberta, against government and corporate propaganda terms being used to justify the then-impending illegal invasion of and war against (i.e., aggression) the people of Iraq.

Globalization's New Logic: The Rise of Developing-World Multinationals

2008-05-26T16:48:00.003-06:00

2007 May 2008 - World Politics Review Exclusive

Simon Roughneen writes:

In March, India's Tata Group made headlines with its $2.3 billion acquisition of Jaguar and Land Rover (JLR) from Ford, the latest in a series of high-profile mergers and acquisitions in which well-known Western brands such as IBM, Barclays Bank, Tetley Tea and Corus steel have been bought, in part or entirely, by multinational corporations from developing economies.

Those with a longer historical view might recall that it was private business -- the British East India Company -- that imposed imperial control over the "brightest jewel in the empire," before crown rule was implemented in 1858. With Tata scooping up two high-prestige British brands, a reversal of historic proportions appears to be taking place. Meanwhile, during the recent worldwide credit crunch, sovereign wealth funds, state-run investment vehicles often controlled by resource-rich developing countries, have helped bail out cash-strapped Western financial powerhouses like Merrill Lynch, Barclays, UBS and Morgan Stanley.

In the past, globalization's critics have alleged that the opening up of economic borders is little more than a license for giant Western companies to colonize emerging economies. But recent trends suggest otherwise. In his "The Emerging Markets Century," Antoine Van Agtmael says that the combined size of today's emerging economies will be bigger than their Western counterparts by 2030, which he predicts will help more and more emerging-market companies overtake their rivals in industrialized countries. According to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), foreign direct investment outflows from developing countries grew from 5.2 percent of the world total in 1990, to 14.3 percent in 2006. Simultaneously, "over 1 billion people are being lifted out of poverty," Harold L. Sirkin, co-author of "Globality: Competing with Everyone from Everywhere for Everything," told World Politics Review.

At the same time, new marquee brands based in the developing world are emerging. Chinese computer maker Lenovo made waves in 2005 by buying IBM's $11 billion PC business. "Big Blue" is now a part of the world's fourth-largest computer manufacturer, whose largest shareholder is the Chinese government. Elsewhere, Indian software outfits Infosys and Wipro have revolutionized the $650 billion technology services industry. In 2006, a takeover of Arcelor, Europe's biggest steelmaker, by India-based Mittal Steel established the world's largest steel company. The newly constituted Arcelor-Mittal is the worlds first steel company with an output exceeding 100 million tons annually. Adding to his celebrity-entrepreneur status, company founder Lakshmi Mittal topped the U.K. Sunday Times' "Rich List," published March 20, for the fourth year running, with assets now valued at over $45 billion. (The Times' list profiles "Britain's richest 2000." Although Mittal retains his Indian passport, he and his family spend much of their time in London.)

These are but the most high-profile examples. Sirkin, who is a senior partner at Boston Consulting Group, said, "high profile M&As aside, there are hundreds of companies from India, China, Brazil and elsewhere that are challenging household-name competitors from the OECD countries, and this challenge is global and growing."

Of course, all this does not mean that Dell or General Motors or Siemens are dead in the water. Far from it. Sirkin's book, due for release June 12, describes a world where "everything, everywhere will be up for grabs, and competition will be just as widespread." In 2006, UNCTAD noted that foreign direct investment in developing economies still exceeds outflow by more than $200 billion.

The global gold rush could be undermined by worldwide recession, however, with the U.S. and EU slowing or already stagnant. Rising food and energy prices are feeding inflation and eating into disposable incomes among the world's rising middle classes. Although it's too early to tell, these trends could undermine some of the base upon which emerging-economy enterprises are building their global strategies.

But for now, emerging economy multinationals are on a roll. Causes vary, but to generalize, for one, economies of scale matter: India and China have very large and growing domestic markets to fuel growth globally. And they have a head start on Western competitors in their home markets. Low local costs coupled with the communications revolution mean companies can go global sooner and faster than was the case in the 1960s-1980s, when German, Japanese and then Asian Tiger businesses came to worldwide prominence.

But it is not all about colonialism-in-reverse. Many companies in the developing world are also expanding into other developing-world markets. On April 25, 2008, for example, a Financial Times story was subheadlined "Could India be about to shake up the global telecoms industry?" The report concerned Indian company Bharti Airtel's bid for Africa's largest wireless company, MTN. The report asserted that "the industry's winners and losers are being increasingly defined by exposure to emerging markets."

A significant and growing proportion of global trade and investment activity runs between developing economies, where massive new middle classes are emerging. An extra 1.8 billion people will join these ranks globally during the next 12 years, according to Foreign Policy editor Moises Naim. With huge and increasingly affluent markets emerging in the so-called BRIC countries of Brazil, Russia, India and China, and across Southeast Asia, companies in these countries are looking to other developing economies as viable markets.

Sino-Indian trade grew 38 percent during 2006, as the former overtook the United States to become the world's second-largest exporter, behind Germany. The World Bank Group estimates that south-south corporate investment more than tripled to $47 billion from 1995 to 2003. Currently it is probably closer to $60 billion. Speaking at the 2006 World Economic Forum, the chairman of India's Satyam Computer Services, B. Ramalinga Raju, told an audience that "culture can be as important to multinational success as capital." Companies used to operating in developing economies have an advantage where American or European companies can be daunted by political instability, corruption and a perception that consumers cannot afford to buy their products.

In addition, the developing world's emerging giants have had to beat not only local competition but Western multinationals as well. And that has meant making profits at prices that Europe and the U.S. would find unthinkable. Greater exposure to competition sets this wave apart from the success of Asian companies during the latter part of the 20th century, where protectionist models allowed Mitsubishi, Samsung and others to grow at home before becoming global players.

Even if developing-world companies do not mount major global challenges, many are having significant success against Western multinationals in serving middle-income consumers at home. Grupo Positivo in Brazil has 18 percent of the domestic computer market, larger than the combined share of Hewlett-Packard and Dell, its two closest competitors.

Tata's acquisition of JLR was preceded by the advent of its Nano, a $2,500 automobile aimed squarely at meeting growing Indian demand for cheap personal transportation. By going low, Tata has set the bar high for other auto manufacturers who are eyeing the 200 million-strong Indian middle class. Low-cost domestic strategies can also lead to success abroad: Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M) dominates the Indian market with its small tractors. But a 2006 Businessweek survey showed that two-thirds of the tractors sold in the United States are 70 horsepower or less. Now, M&M is undercutting Deere and other established tractor makers in the U.S. Similarly, Brazilian aircraft maker Embraer utilized its national base to fly past Canada's Bombardier, becoming the world's No. 3 aircraft maker and winning midsize-jet orders that otherwise would have gone to Airbus and Boeing.

Expect current trends to continuing as developing-world companies continue to see the strategic benefits of going global: not only to grow in new markets, but also to acquire the intangible assets like branding and intellectual capital that give Western rivals a competitive advantage, for now. Thus, more combinations of developing-world and Western companies are likely. Sirkin believes developing world companies will continue to "outbid Western competitors" to buy access to new technologies and markets.

(Simon Roughneen is a freelance journalist who has reported from more than 20 countries.)

Minister Faust speaks on youth activism

2008-05-22T14:36:00.002-06:00

Introduction by Jon Jon Rivero

The speech from summer 2006

Watch ETHNIC NOTIONS, the brilliant decoder of race in North American popular culture

2008-05-18T15:24:00.004-06:00

The late Br. Marlon Riggs was a brilliant documentarian. Here's his classic work Ethnic Notions, which should be required viewing for North Americans or anybody globally who consumes North American pop culture of any form.

The link to the remaining segments is here.

Thanks, Br. Marlon.

Minister Faust on religion, spirituality, politics, social justice and human rights

2008-05-18T14:16:00.004-06:00

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

Minister Faust speaks about Philip K. Dick

2008-05-15T19:36:00.004-06:00

The Word This Week special hosted by Kim Clarke Champniss about visionary SF author Philip K. Dick.

Guests include your truly (a two-time PKD nominee), as well as Jonathan Lethem, Chris Miller, Mark Askwith, Winona Ryder, Michael Bishop, Richard Linklater and William Gibson.

PART ONE

PART TWO

PART THREE

Who funds Clibamacain?

2008-05-14T20:15:00.003-06:00

Here's the man who SHOULD be the US president

2008-05-14T20:11:00.001-06:00