The Cancer of Racism must not destroy America

Famous literary stalwart James Baldwin once said, “I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.”

As the words “not guilty” fell from the lips of the six jurors in the Trayvon Martin murder case on Saturday night, I thought to myself how those two words have never been applied to African-American humanity in America.

This opprobrious verdict reaffirmed everything African-Americans thought about this country that our humanity and citizenship isn’t recognized under the laws of the United States. I’ve never been more disappointed in the country of my birth. The American justice system continues to set a double standard when it comes to dishing out prison sentences to African-Americans and whites.

As a young African-American man living in the south, it made me pause and realize that this ruling can give anyone the opportunity to take my life whenever they feel threatened because of my skin color or how I walk, talk or dress. What is a black life worth? The answer was already abundantly clear from history, but those six jurors confirmed our deepest, darkest suspicions.

Since arriving on the shores of Jamestown, Virginia in 1619, African-Americans have been convicted in the court of white supremacy as being less than human. Our hellacious suffering provided whites the capital to build a country based on the principles of white hegemony. African-Americans were never part of their equation other than providing a consistent source of free labor. When the founding fathers were writing the Declaration of Independence and Constitution, they couldn’t fathom the humanity of their slaves and their offspring. For 394 years, we’ve been America’s doormat and punching bag.

The cancer of racism thrives in America because the ones with the power refuse to acknowledge minorities as their equals. Race was devised as a social construct in order for whites to establish and maintain their dominance in political and economic affairs in America. The truth is we’ve been living in two Americas based on race and class. The United States of America is in name only. If we were truly united, African-Americans wouldn’t have to endure systematic subjugation and degradation on a daily basis.

The cancer of racism thrives in the halls of Congress, state legislatures, educational institutions, judicial proceedings, and the evidence can be seen in the refusal to work with the first African-American president to pass laws to uplift minorities out of their perilous conditions. If it’s not gerrymandering or redistricting to dilute our voting power, it’s constructing private prisons and using the War on Drugs as a conduit to incarcerate African-Americans at an astronomical rate. If it’s not closing schools in impoverished neighborhoods across the nation, it’s cutting social programs that ease the strenuous burden put on our households every day.

Racism is as American as Uncle Sam and his red, white, and blue outfit. Then, you wonder why African-Americans have the highest rates of high blood pressure, prostate and breast cancer, diabetes, among other ailments. It’s because we’re stressed out and tired of being confined in an unjust system that was never intended for us to become successful. But it’s a testament to our character of how we’ve been able to rise above it and achieve numerous successes.

There have been countless examples ranging from police brutalities, murders, and passage of laws that continue the troubling trend of psychological and physical oppression. This white hegemonic system has stalled the progression of African-Americans for far too long. These latest atrocities of Jordan Davis, Marissa Alexander, and Gabby Calhoun are an extension of this system, which is pervasive throughout our culture. Most of our white brethren still refuse to acknowledge these facts as well as the statistics proving black disenfranchisement. Before we can fully progress as a society, this ignorant denial has to cease.

The cancer of racism fools poor whites into voting for a political party that has no interest in solving their financial and social ills. The cancer of racism makes voting damn near impossible in the south after the Voting Rights Act was dismantled. The cancer of racism has the Republican Party wanting to turn the clock back to 1913 through their divisive policies. The cancer of racism allows defense attorneys Don West and Mark O’Mara and jurors to exercise their privilege in portraying Trayvon Martin as a criminal when he was an innocent child. The cancer of racism provides the opportunity for police militarized states to stop and frisk young African-American men every day.

For every person in this society to begin receiving a fair shake, each one of us has to become proactive in fighting on the side of right and not on the side of privilege. America will never be a post-racial society unless serious dialogue and actions to reform these inadequate measures begin. The work needs to take place in American homes and to a larger extent our schools and lawmaking bodies. The responsibility of tackling this dreaded disease falls at the feet of Generations X and Y.

To my white brothers and sisters, it must begin with you all. The time has arrived for racism to be discussed, denounced, and deposed of. No more standing on the sidelines. If our country is to become truly united, these unlawful injustices and practices must be addressed and policies must be enacted to curtail the centuries of damage already done. African-Americans have been fighting on the battlefield of justice for as long as you’ve been conspiring against us. While you hold the cards, we’ve more than earned our seat at the playing table to start this process of gaining racial conciliation and economic empowerment.

The future of our society is contingent upon this potential of mutual respect. Now,the Presidential election is close, and there is a racist who is contesting for the Presidential seat but already,he has brainwashed the whites against blacks.If that racist becomes the President of America,his racist supporters will start treating us like strangers in our own land instead of treating us as brothers and sisters.we are like families. Otherwise, the cancer of racism will destroy this country.

 Written by Chris Williams

 Twitter.com/@iamchriswms,www.chriswilliamswrites.com

Chris Williams is an internationally published writer who has written feature articles covering the topics of politics, race, culture, entertainment, and world events. His work has been featured on the BBC, National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA), PopMatters, and Black America Web. He is a frequent contributor to Ebony. He is working on his first book.

Poland axes promise to take in migrants after Brussels suicide bombings

                                                          Beata Szydlo

 Poland today abandoned its promise to the EU to take in 7,000 migrants because of the jihadist attacks in Brussels that killed 34 people.

The country's previous government had agreed to take the migrants in, but today Prime Minister Beata Szydlo declared she would not be honoring the agreement.

Speaking at the Belgian Embassy in Warsaw where she laid flowers to honor the victims, she appealed for urgent talks to allow Europe to counter the 'plague' of radicalisation.

Her spokesman later said the Polish government would not 'allow for events in Western Europe to happen in Poland'

According to her, 'We must put an end to terrorism in Europe. We must not be afraid.

'After what happened in Brussels yesterday, it's not possible right now to say that we're OK with accepting any number of migrants at all,' she told local broadcaster Superstacja. 'I will be very clear: at the moment, I don’t see a possibility for migrants to come to Poland.'

How to Overcome Failure: 9 Powerful Habits

“Failures are finger posts on the road to achievement.”
C. S. Lewis
“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.”
Samuel Beckett

You make a mistake, have setback or you simply fail. It’s no fun. But you can’t avoid it either unless you avoid doing anything at all.
So what’s needed is a smart and self-kind way to handle such situations instead of letting them lead to vicious self beatings and to them dragging you down into negativity for the day or month.

This week I’d like to share 9 habits that’ve helped me with that. I hope they will be useful for you too.

1. First, just accept how you feel.
When you’ve just failed it will most likely hurt. Sometimes a bit. Sometimes a lot.
That’s OK. Don’t try to push it away by distracting yourself or by trying to push the responsibility onto the rest of the world (if you deep down know that this one’s on you partly or fully). And don’t try to paint it over with a smile.
I’ve found that it works better to not let yourself be lead away by those options or impulses.
But to just be with what I’m thinking and feeling. To try to accept it, to let it in and to hurt for a while instead of trying to reject it all and to keep it away.

2. Remember: you’re not a failure just because you had a setback.
When you’ve had a setback it’s very easy to start thinking that you will always keep failing in this area of your life. It’s easy to start thinking that YOU are indeed a failure.
Don’t fall for such a destructive and sometimes seductive self-fulfilling prophecy.
Instead, remind yourself that:

• Just because you failed today or yesterday doesn’t mean that you’ll fail the next time.
• The truth is that this won’t last for the rest of your life if you keep moving forward, if you take action and you keep learning and it doesn’t label you as some kind of failure (except if you decide to create that label in your own head).

3. Be constructive and learn from this situation.
See it more as valuable feedback and something you can use to improve rather than only a big blow and setback.
I’ve found that the simplest and most helpful way to do that is to ask myself better questions (instead of the common ones that send you off into a negative spiral).
Questions like:

• What’s one thing I can learn from this?
• How can I adjust my course to avoid this trap/making the same mistake and likely do better next time?

Take some time with these questions and be honest with yourself as you answer them. There’s no rush and while some of the answers may be immediate others might take an hour, day or even a week to pop up.
The important thing is to start thinking about the situation from this perspective and to be constructive about things instead of getting stuck in denial or negativity and apathy.

4. Remind yourself: anyone who wants to do things of value in life will fail.
We often mostly just hear about people’s successes. But the path to those milestones tends to have many setbacks. The story of someone’s success may seem only bright and fast-moving in what’s told in the media or we see in our minds.
But the reality – and the useful way to approach setbacks – is most often more like this quote by Michael Jordan:
“I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”
5. Let it out into the light.
Another powerful way to handle the emotional fallout and the thoughts that come from a failure is to not keep it all bottled up inside.
But to let it out into the light by talking it over with someone close to you.

• By venting about it while the other person just listens you can sort things out for yourself, help yourself to accept what happened instead of pushing it away and release that inner pressure.
• By having a conversation about the situation you can see it from another perspective and through someone else’s eyes. This person can help you to ground yourself in reality again, to encourage and to perhaps even to find a way forward.

6. Find inspiration and support from your world.
A conversation with someone close to you can be very helpful.
Another thing you can do is to learn from those who’ve gone where you want to go. Read about how they handled setbacks and low-points before or during their success in books, on websites or online forums.
Or you can simply tap into the enthusiasm or motivation of someone else by listening to a podcast or audio book for maybe 30-60 minutes. This may not be specifically about your current challenge but can help you to shift your mood and mindset back towards optimism again.
7. Move forward again, don’t get stuck in mulling this situation over for too long.
Processing the situation and accepting it is essential.
But I know from experience that it’s also easy to get stuck in the same thoughts going around and around for week or a month.
The habit that has helped me with this trap is to take what I learn from questions like the ones I shared in tip #3 and to make a small rough plan for how I want to move forward from here.
So I take some time to sit down and write that one out.
8. Take action on that plan right away after you’ve drawn it up.
The plan you come up with will just be a start. You can course-correct later on, along the way.
So you don’t have to make it perfect. Trying to do that can sometimes just be a way to procrastinate because you fear failing again or because it is hard to start moving after this rough and disorienting thing that happened to you.
Split your start of a plan up into small steps and then take action on just one of them.
If you still have a hard time to get going then go for a very small step, just 1-5 minutes of action forward. The important thing is to get started and moving forward again so make that easy on yourself.
9. Improve your self-esteem.
A last thing that has helped me in general to handle setbacks is to improve my self esteem.

• By doing so failures don’t become something that so easily drags me down and I recover more quickly from them.
• It also makes it easier to see what happened with more clarity and to take responsibility when I am responsible but also to see when someone else is partly responsible or when I just had bad luck that I could honestly not have predicted. And that helps me to not think that everything that goes wrong in my life is 100% my fault.

 Written by Henrik Edberg

UAE stops $517m transfer by ex-governor

An attempt by a yet to be identified former Nigerian governor to transfer $517million out of United Arab Emirates to Dominican Republic has been blocked by the authorities.

A report said the former governor hit a brickwall because UAE money laundering laws are now strict.

Nigeria had signed a “Judicial Agreement on Extradition, Transfer of Sentenced Persons, Mutual Legal Assistance on Criminal Matters, and Mutual Legal Assistance on Criminal and Commercial Matters, which includes the recovery and repatriation of stolen wealth”, in the course of President Muhammadu Buhari’s visit last January.
A Federal Government team, comprising the Minister of Justice and Attorney-General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami, the Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Ibrahim Magu and crack detectives from the anti-graft agency, are in Dubai and have started comparing collated intelligence notes on the PEPs with their UAE counterparts.

The EFCC officials arrived in Dubai on Saturday.
Under the searchlight for stashing away cash or acquiring properties in the UAE are seven former governors, six former ministers, a fleeing presidential aide implicated in the $2.1billion arms deals, ex-military chiefs under probe, agents / fronts of some of these public officers and five chieftains of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

No vacancy in Aso Rock in 2019 - APC

 

The National Caucus of APC has said there is no vacancy in the presidency come 2019. According to Vanguard, members of the National caucus which comprises of serving and former governors, the National Assembly leadership, and selected members of the national executive of the party, stated this after a meeting with President Buhari on Tuesday March 22nd. A source at the meeting said;

"With Buhari contesting in 2019, those who have been squabbling will now have to queue up behind him and put the interest of the party ahead".

The source added that the issue was brought up as a way of resting restiveness among some party leaders, who have been divided over who will secure the party's presidential ticket come 2019.

The source added that the positioning by different party leaders on 2019 has been blamed for the problems that led to the crisis in the National Assembly and also the inability of the party to inaugurate its Board of Trustees, BoT till date.

Chinese man pleads guilty to US military hack

A 50-year-old Chinese man has pleaded guilty to being involved in a plot to hack into systems containing sensitive US military data.

Su Bin is believed to have been part of a group targeting data relating to fighter jets, cargo aircraft and weapons.
The US Department of Justice said in a statement that Mr Su sought "commercial gain" from his actions.
Mr Su, a Chinese resident,was arrested while working in Canada in 2014 . He faces five years in prison and a $250,000 (£170,000) fine.

8 Top Targets ISIS Could Strike Next

Multiple bombings rocked the Brussels airport and subway on Tuesday, killing at least 31 people and wounding hundreds of others, and the Islamic State soon claimed responsibility for the attack.
"The two airport blasts, at least one of them blamed on a suicide bomber, left behind a chaotic scene of splattered blood in the departure lounge as windows were blown out, ceilings collapsed, and travelers streamed out of the smoky building.
 Belgium raised its terror alert to the highest level, diverting planes and trains and ordering people to stay where they were for most of the workday. Airports across Europe — and in the New York area — tightened security."

What's more,Richard Engel reported that there are eight targets ISIS or other terrorist groups could strike next, gathering informations from government intelligence

1. Americans traveling abroad — The State Department has identified international civilian travelers as potential targets, and encourages them to enroll in its Smart Traveler Enrollment Pogram(STEP), which gives you the latest security updates, and makes it easier for the nearest U.S. embassy or consulate to contact you in an emergency."

2. New York City — Manhattan has long been a target for terrorists around the globe, and the World Trade Center was attacked in 1993 and on Sept. 11, 2001. In November 2015, the Islamic State released a video that appeared to threaten Manhattan's Times Square and Herald Square with suicide bombings.

3. London — In July of 2005, four British Muslim terrorists suicide-bombed the London subway system and a double-decker bus, killing 52 civilians. In December 2015,CNN reported that :"Intelligence officials believe ISIS is planning to attack targets in the U.K. soon."

4. Cruise ships — "Vice Admiral Clive Johnstone, the U.K.’s highest naval officer in NATO, said Islamic State’s spread into Libya had cast an ‘uncomfortable shadow’ over the sea",the Daily mail reported in January. "In stark remarks, he revealed the IS terror groups are attempting to build a navy to wage war against the West . . . He said there was a ‘horrible opportunity’ that a ‘very high quality weapons system’ would be used to hit ships crossing the sea, having ‘extraordinary implications’ for the Western World."

5. Shopping areas — In December 2014, an American teacher was stabbed to death at a mall in Abu Dhabi by a suspect wearing a burqa. Police later arrested suspect Dalal al Hashemi, a 38-year-old Emirati citizen of Yemeni origin, in connection with the murder. Authorities said she was inspired by jihadist websites to carry out a "personal terrorist attack" on random victims,news reported .

6. Airplanes — Al-Qaida has issued warnings that it now has developed bombs that are completely undetectable — that don’t use metal and have non-detectable explosives — and could likely bypass airport security. It’s likely that if one terrorist organization has access to such weapons, ISIS won’t be far behind.

7. Churches and synagogues — On Nov. 18, 2014, two Muslim men attacked Jewish worshipers at the Kehilat Bnei Torah synagogue in Jerusalem. Wielding axes and guns, they killed four. It was one of many terror attacks on houses of worship through the years.

8. Schools — Terror groups regularly train to attack schools. In 2014, school children were abducted by militant Islamist group Boko Haram in Nigeria, and 140 school children were killed by terrorists in Peshawar in north-west Pakistan. In early 2015, the BBC reported that "Terror attacks on schools and colleges around the world have risen to higher levels than at any point in more than 40 years, according to a long-term analysis of global terrorism."

Compiled By Mike Garcia