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Diddy’s Best Friend Charlie Liucci is Being Loud About His Next Moves Will Be Following Acquittal
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A Culture Warrior's Impact on AIDS in Africa
Jesse Helms, former six-term Republican senator from North Carolina and de-facto leader of his party’s “culture wars,” found a way to make HIV-AIDS the communism of the 1990s. As chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Helms did not simply use his power to cut U.S. government assistance to international HIV-AIDS programs, he leveraged his…
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The Ban on Head Scarves Had to Go
Turkey’s parliament voted overwhelmingly this month to end a ban on women wearing head scarves at universities. While this move was decried by Turkey’s secular elite, it was the proper thing to do. The ban was originally intended to limit the role of Islam in the public sphere, but it wound up inflaming the passions…
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Reagan Couldn't Win Either
Can Obama be elected? Can he actually win? Is Bill Clinton right about the Obama fairy tale? I am sick and tired of these questions. Yes he can! Yes we can! Remember, a village in Texas has been missing its idiot for nearly 8 years now. If we can elect Bush president of the United…
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The American Military Moves Into Africa
Donald Rumsfeld, the Bush Administration’s Defense Secretary forced to resign for his failed policies in Iraq, left a parting gift to the people of Africa, a unified U.S. military command in Africa, also known as AFRICOM. AFRICOM, which is being run from an outpost in Stuttgart, Germany, is the embodiment of the militarized U.S. foreign…
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Did the Pan-African Dream Die With Apartheid?
Not long ago, I wrote an article for the Paris-based magazine, Africa Report, about the broken ties between African Americans and Africans. I described how the two groups had worked in harmony to end apartheid in South Africa some two decades ago, which raised hopes for a pan-African future. But, I wrote, “The momentum was…
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Bush’s Real Legacy in Africa
President Bush has traveled to the African continent on a trip billed as “an opportunity to demonstrate America’s commitment to the people of…Africa.” Yet Africans are likely to be as skeptical of Mr. Bush’s “compassionate conservatism” as African Americans. Bush is frequently heralded as the president that has done more for Africa than any in…
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That Was My Geology Class
I was on a train in New York City when I received a frantic call from a writer at the Northern Star, the school newspaper at Northern Illinois University. The reporter told me there was a shooting at my school and that he was standing next to a girl covered in blood. My worst fear…
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The Bush Family's Slaveholding Past
The image most people have of slavery involves a cotton plantation with a big white house, a black village where 300 people live in cabins and a cruel overseer in the wings. This was not the model followed by the ancestors of President George W. Bush when, 175 years ago, they enslaved about 30 people…
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Is the NBA Losing Its Street Cred?
This weekend, when the NBA All Stars play in New Orleans, expect lots of slam dunks and other flamboyant plays that have become typical of black basketball. It’s not an ugly stereotype; it’s history. Pre-NBA, most black basketball teams played in ballrooms and were part of an evening of entertainment that often included a big…
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Bush's Liberian Lovefest
President George W. Bush is off on a visit to Africa. He’ll be zipping through Benin, Tanzania, Rwanda, Ghana and Liberia in less than a week. Some may wonder why, after visiting Africa only once before during his long (interminable) presidency, in 2003, Bush has decided at this late date to return his attention, albeit…
