African land for $1.50 per hectare per year

The Guardian’s webpage uncovered an article that I found particularly disturbing. At a time when as a nation we have been forced to examine some of our core values by out of touch politicians (including a deputy Prime Minister with an arson conviction), we are once more fed a moral high ground from a UK Government. A Government regardless of political party, and whether it’s the current one or one in office two years ago, because whoever they are, they are still sustaining a type of governance and a general view of how the world should be run.

Now I’m not a proponent of any political form, nor saying how people should vote or think. My beef is actually with the overall message that is not said because our parties are too similar, that message being that having a democratic capitalist society really is the only way to run a “progressive” country… regardless of how that system is at the expense of others.

The Guardian article didn’t actually refer to actions by the United Kingdom, but no doubt global finance being what it is, and our general view of obtaining wealth from others regardless of the human cost, I find it hard to believe our involvement in the world economy doesn’t make us complicit.  

The article reports on how there is a huge land grab in Africa for cheap land, either as an investment, or to grow foods for non-African markets. One hectare of land in East Africa can be leased for $1.50 per year. Do I really need to elaborate on the way of the world that can find that not to be considered stealing.

At the same time Hilary Clinton was warning African nations to ensure they dealt with nations that had their best interests at heart (ie. The US and not China), the US and the West grows bio fuels there for the insatiable appetite for car fuel, at the expense of arable land.

Also this week, we have seen a hurricane narrowly miss Haiti where some 600,000 people still live in tents over 18 months after the earthquake, and after many millions donated. I don’t advocate anyone not giving to charity (and the events such as those in the famine in East Africa were never more pressing for help), but I do have concerns that we may donate and think we are then unaccountable.  Like many people who donated to Haiti, I found great concern at how long aid took to get off the runway in the weeks after the earthquake, and this weeks hurricane should have made every aid organisation and world government question themselves as to how they have allowed tent cities to remain for so long in a hurricane zone (let alone the risks of cholera and rape that are documented).

How do we go that extra step to make sure that those we have voted for, or donated to, or even bought products from, carry our trust. Do we simply let them carry on and reactively or even passively feel we’ve done enough, or do we say that we have to be proactive and ensure that those that are accountable… be held to account. Whether that’s household names exploiting agriculture not a million miles from a famine, world aid, raw materials for our smart phones at the expense of rape and murder, or closer to home, the deaths of young men by uniformed officers on our streets.

I’m not preaching what should be done, nor saying I do my part, but I’m simply left wondering at what point I and we decide we can no longer continue to be complicit by our inactivity, and move to a point where we say …. Not in my name.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/2011/aug/24/indian-agribusiness-land-east-africa

UK first interview with Tamika Catchings

Hi friends
I recently interviewed WNBA star Tamika Catchings for Phenomenal Healthstyle....
enjoy....

Tamika Catchings interview

Sowing The Seed

My latest article for Phenomenal Healthstyle, click here

Living With Passion

Catch my latest weekly article at Phenomenal Healthstyle on Living With Passion.

Phenomenal Healthstyle

I have been invited to write a weekly column for Phenomenal Healthstyle.
My first article was published today. Please follow the link and leave a comment there.
Phenomenal Healthstyle

Peace
Sloetry

A Poem, A Prayer

Dear Lord

As I seek to grow in your Love & Faith,

And find spirituality and goodness in the world around me.

Let me learn from the humble, the meek and the peacemakers.

Let me learn of your greatness in however you are,

Male or Female, in your Godly form

Or Nature’s spirits

Of ancestors or Mother Earth.

Let me question those who would bring me man’s truth

And not Your own.

Let my ears be closed to those whose church spread the globe

Because they had invented sail and musket.

Or branded darker skin on Caribbean plantations,

Carving up the continent which birthed humanity.

Let me beware of those who fought wars in your name,

And represent you through uniforms in church

That honour parade grounds and institutionalised pain,

Yet they teach me your Son was of absolute peace.

Let me learn of churches and faiths closer to you

Whose meaning has been trodden by centuries of oppression

And devalued to labels of evil by those who do not now dwell in heaven.

Teach me of churches carved in rock in East Africa,

Of indigenous spirituality stripped from my own people

That still blesses those who have been divided and ruled

But whose Faith is maintained.

For whatever form is your Great Mystery,

Let me learn to live my life by your Divine teachings,

And not by those who would describe your Son

As the same colour as my light self.

I seek your Truth, your Wisdom, your Guidance,

From You and your Disciples

Wherever they should be found.

Amen.

Fear Not

Fear defies the laws of physics.

Its perpetual energy

Starts at the most gentle of nudges,

Becoming a raging torrent

That sweeps the owner

Into an abyss of fragility.

A brain wired to always

Think the worst scenario

Entertains this downward spiral

Into dysfunction.

Let our minds switch.

Let lonely thoughts

Ramble to possibility and hope

With faster rhythms than negativity.

May peace finds its way to the hardest heart,

And positivity bless as the truth.

Let the mind be the cure,

And not the disease.

One drop of rain does not imply a storm.

It is simply water, the life giver. 

Haiti Remembered, a year on

God bless the people of Haiti. A year tomorrow since.

A year ago I lay alone.

Prone

On a Birmingham hotel bed.

I thought of the dead,

The dying

The living, the crying.

I won’t deny my eyes watered

For trapped sons and daughters.

The news channel delivered to me,

First reports of an earthquake in Haiti.

A country born from fight,

A flag made once ripped out the white

From the Tricolour.

No room for the defeated oppressor’s colour.

And yet a nation still miles from home.

Kings and Queens from ancestral homes.

The strength of people

Who had delivered themselves from evil.

A dagger through the imperial heart.

Even Napolean had been Blownapart. 

And don’t allow the French Connection

To let England hide it’s intended direction.

Abolition of the holocaust trade

Had economic reasons made

From Hispaniola’s wealthy curse.

Britain simply wanted to bankrupt the French purse.

But the war never really ended.

The West’s ego was still offended.

A worldwide conspiracy to make them pay,

Debt still owed from an enslaved day.

External influences, the european tool,

Always success through divide and rule.

Then nature raised it’s sword and slashed,

As if hurricanes hadn’t been enough.

My emotions raw at the news,

And yet my donations were abused,

Crates sat on runways,

No one digging dust from airways

Choked behind crushed doors.

Cardboard beds on hospital floors,

And the D.E.C.

Sucked D.I.C.

Today, foreign intervention,

Whatever the intention

Has sky high’d rent.

So even more are living in tents.

Aid workers there assisting,

Are causing eviction.

The media a year on in this nation…

I’m just seeing photographers on vacation.

Roll up for a tragedy pose

As life Flickr’s out with shots of toes

Curled from cholera’s grip.

How much more of this shit.

Does Haiti have to take?

The UN not protecting girls from rape.

Instead bringing in disease.

Is the cure only in keeping things clean?

I don’t know about you.

I was innoculated at school.

And still money sits and waits.

While someone earns interest from unopened crates.

Europeans rush to adopt kids like vultures

So keen to bring them up in alien cultures.

Fuck your wealth to import children.

Instead pay a family to construct a home, a building,

And stop taking from mothers whose womb has birthed

On a Caribbean island, their African earth.

I don’t doubt the resolve of this nation.

History hasn’t yet defeated a Haitian.

Let the mirror show where lies the sin.

Reflect what will be, and what has been.

Colour Barrier

Truth is I see colour.

It’s something I don’t want to see,

But until the scales of equality balance

I have to see difference.

You see, I see white everywhere.

In “multi-cultured” institutions

I see white at the helm.

Government, police and judiciary.

Media, finance and industry.

From capitalism to capital punishment,

And yes, in my mirror…

I see white.

In the language used,

I’ve had to undo years of being fed

That good comes in white packages,

Yet the Messiah Himself was not.

So let me say as a Christian,

Hallelujah, I see the dark and it is good.

Language warped, as my church has been,

To justify a Passage… not of scriptures,

But of the Middle of the Atlantic,

As African bones line the floor of an ocean,

That created a diaspora away from home,

As the church preached

White was right.

I untangle expressions like "black day"

Into a positive 24 hour period.

Frankly it’s white I see in evil power,

So I won’t indoctrinate my children

To form their mouths into first words

Of a treacherous euro babble.

The seeds of racism grow

In the unconscious mind.

So I will be awake to race,

Colour, creed and faith.

To ask me not to see colour

Ignores the legacy of my white face.

Interview

I was blessed to receive my first ever interview (thanks to Naomi)

http://cursesandriots.wordpress.com/2010/12/17/keep-learning-an-interview-with-photographer-rob-covell/

Roots Manouver

Roots Manouver

Is it morris dancing

Or kids prancing

To heavy metal, banging heads?

Is it skinheads

Or bowing to the Queen?

The Union Jack that once dominated the world scene.

Singing Rule Brittania at the Proms,

And no one thinking its wrong.

Love of a pre-war "white" England.

Ruling with pain but claiming it as Jerusalem.

Stiff upper lip and stifling all emotions.

Transporting Africans across the Atlantic ocean.

Forcing guilt on the defeated, for the victor the spoils.

Ruling in God's name, justifying slaves' toil.

Muttering under breath at the sight of darker skin.

Saying one thing. Thinking another within.

Writing history books for the self-righteous.

Murdering those whose truth is contagious.

Justifying a system of wealth,

Its ok, cos poverty happens to someone else.

Thinking superiority over all other people,

At the same time claiming that everyone is equal.

Seeing suffering as something Africans are used to,

Only when it's British deaths is the pain perceived as true.

Black deaths in detention.

And no one giving it a mention.

And people ask me why...

How easy is it for me to defy

My ancestral line,

And stand for a revolution not seen as mine?

Read all the above again.

You want me to trust English white men?

Photography

I wouldn't normally post my photography on my poetry blog, but I'm just so pleased with this latest set that....well it's all poetry to me, and the model is a world renowned poet!!

2 four letter words

If

Love

Were

A Poem.

She’d

Have

Been

Written,

By

You

Leamington Spa Station

For those who lovingly suggest I diversify my poetry portfolio... here's 2 things I wrote while traveling home from working on location today.

Leamington Spa Station 

Poem 1

It’s the usual poet’s poem…

Sat at a station.

I’m cold.

Trying to think

Of something profound to write.

I can’t.

(then I perchanced to look upon the ground)….

Poem 2

The station’s concrete floor

Seems to have set.

But while wet,

A dog must have trespassed.

Now her legacy imprints platform 3.

The fast train to Marylebone

Sits and waits.

Blank stairs oblivious…

But I noticed.

I wish I had my camera.

Hold On

Hold On
by
Sloetry

Cuffs tighten on shaking wrists.

Tears drip off trembling lips.

Feet bondaged in metal chains,

That lead to arms, neck, and down again.

Whips and sticks beat heads to pulp.

Women and children scream for help.

Tropical heat in free air, breathes ice cold,

Compared with death, stench and suffocating oven of the hold.

90 days of swirling ocean.

Home gone. To hell in motion.

Vomit and faeces between toes whose worth

Once embraced the love of African earth.

Some hold breath

To cheat with death.
Head injuries self-inflicted,

Rather die than be constricted

In sailing ships from slave stations,

Filling holds to alien nations.

Cuffs tighten on desperate wrists.

Fear stutters from bruised lips.

Feet flail and pound van doors.

Blooded noses crack onto floors.

Batons rain on heads to pulp.

Panic induced cries for help.

African faces distorted against floors of cold.

Uniforms pile on top to secure the hold.

Minutes seem like hours in a struggle for life.

Metal eating into flesh, cuts like a knife.

Bodies clench in death throws,

Buffeting sideways to escape the blows.

Weight bears down on prone spines

Lungs expel air, feared for the last time.

Head injuries inflicted, its black and blue.

Longing for mothers slips to unconscious view.

Four wheeled ships as transportation.

Filling holds in alien nations.