The UN decides Water is NOT a basic right.

The Harper government can declare victory after a United Nations meeting rejected calls for water to be recognized as a basic human right.

Instead, a special resolution proposed by Germany and Spain at the UN human rights council was stripped of references that recognized access to water as a human right. The countries also chose to scrap the idea of creating an international watchdog to investigate the issue, choosing instead to appoint a new consultant that would make recommendations over the next three years.

I don’t get this, how can this be possible - there is some seriously skewed up and frightening thinking going on here. This comment says it all

Interesting how the logic of psychopathic capitalism works. You are a human being. As such, you need water simply to stay alive. But if we recognize it as a human right, then we will not be able to bottle it and sell it to you. Therefore it is not a human right. If you cannot buy it and you incidentally die, that is not our problem.

British but the wrong colour - Black more on travel terror in Europe and the daily Question, are you really Breeish?

However to that police officer, that immigration officer, that airline worker and any other officialdom you come across as a citizen of the united Kingdom, it is a matter of Yes British but not the right colour and it seem frustrating that almost on a daily basis the posse ion of the UK passport is not enough as a tool of identity to an adopted homeland, You have to prove your commitment over and over again.

So here we are Black British and Proud but yet continue to face discrimination from British Institutions, Immigration officials questioning your possession of the British passport , British airline giving you 7 to 8 looks and interrogating you in spite of your possession of a valid British passport.

I am beginning to have serious thoughts about what People of Colour are doing in this country. Just maybe it is time for us all to rethink our lives and begin to consider returning home. It is only going to get worse. Already you have to show your passport if you: register at a doctor, rent accommodation, rent a van, rent storage, go to the dentist, even the gym asked for passport ID.

Nasra Al Adawi interviews Marian Douglas of Marian’s blog. Marian started the Facebook group “Women of Colour. Here she speaks about being an Afrodescendant of the Americas

I come from the population of the Americas which is the Afrodescendant people. Afrodescendants of the Americas are the largest population of African people outside Africa. We are all over the Americas, not only in the United States. My ancestors were trafficked from several different parts of Africa. They were the people who survived what is called “the Middle Passage” – that is, the ship voyage of thousands of miles and several weeks – 2 or 3 months, I think – across the Atlantic slave trade. Researchers say that Afrodescendants are 33% or one-third of the entire population of the Americas.

A Cameroonian woman has been awarded £15,000 in compensation for unlawful detention for 8 months at Yarl’s Wood detention center. The woman arrived in Britain and claimed asylum on the basis of being raped and tortured by the police in Cameroon. She was denied the correct procedure for torture victims and eventually refused asylum. It was only at the point of deportation that she was able to access any support, in this case by Women Against Rape* who work work with many women detainees who have lost their asylum claims.

“[The] ruling is a fantastic victory and sets a crucial precedent for many other women in detention,” said a WAR spokeswoman yesterday. “Like PB, many women have had their cases fast-tracked and been detained, denied legal representation, medical and other expert help, and implementation of the Home Office’s own rules which should have secured their release.

“Instead, women, and often their children, suffer months imprisoned in terrible circumstances and many are sent back to the countries they fled, often never having had the help they needed to report rape, or to gather evidence needed to challenge the routine dismissal of rape as grounds for asylum.”

Only last week I met a former detainee who spoke about her imprisonment at Yarl’s Wood. She spoke about women with children who were sexually harassed and abused, verbally abused and beaten and imprisoned in horrendous conditions. For more on Yarl’s Wood see here and here and here.

*Women Against Rape and Black Women Against Rape were two of the organisations marching with the ECP at last weeks IWD rally whose members have been ridiculed, dismissed and subject to lies and name calling in the Guardian’s CiF and on various blogs in Britain and elsewhere.

Tags:
Yarl’s Wood
Cameroon
Asylum Seekers
Black Britain

Tags:
Jean “Binta” Breeze
Grenada

*** Oxfamming the word [via No Longer at Ease] from Kenyan author Binyavanga Wainaina who gave us the wonderful How To Write About Africa.

“Would you like an Oxfam biscuit? Can we fly 103 of you to France to be loved? We can breastfeed you. We can save you from yourself. We can save ourselves from our terrible selves. Help us to Oxfam the whole black world, to make it a better place. We will shut all your industries and build our organic Jeffery Sachs-designed school inside your national parks, where you can commune with nature, grow ecologically friendly crops, trade fairly with eco-tourists and receive visitors from the United Nations every month who will clap when you dance. Instead of sweatshops, we will have Ubuntu shops where you can arrive in biodegradable loincloths to make bone jewellery for caring people who earn $1million a year, live in San Francisco or Cape Town and feel bad about this. In our future world you will have three balanced meals a day. Trust us. You can’t do it yourselves. We have dedicated our lives to you. Come kitties, come to mummy”.

*** White South African blogger, Inside Candy wonders where all the Black bloggers are and wonders if it has anything to do “with access, not enough interest or exposure” - A look at the last census statistics from 2001 should give her some clues although there has been some increase in numbers of Black Middle classes since then and there have been increases in mobile phone ownership and computers.

I realise that this is a potentially loaded question, but where the hell are all the black bloggers hiding? To date, I’ve only met one (I repeat, one) black South African blogger - Obakeng, “The Chief” of ONC Today.

Black Africans (BA) make up 79% of the population v whites (W) at 9%.
BA with higher education - 5% v W 29%
BA with landline or mobile phone -31% v W 95%
BA with own computer 1.8% v W 97%
Unemployment of Black Africans 28% (has risen since 2001) v 4% of whites
Medium annual income of Black Africans 12,000 Rands v 65,400 Rands for whites.

So yes, there are issues of access, cost and time - if it takes you up to 4 hours to get to work and back then blogging is not going to be a priority even if you could afford to have your own computer or access an internet cafe.

Admittedly there are not many but here are some of the blogs by South African POC but I am sure there are many more and as one comment states .

My Realities by the late Busi Sigasa
Loudrastress by Pumla Gqola
Abahlali baseMjondola The Durban Shackdweller Movement
My Haven by Matuba Mahlatjie
Lesbian Rules by Marda Butler
Clement Nyirenda’s Blog World
Township Vibes
SwamiShivapadananda
Lavina Live

*** Speaking of Black bloggers, I am looking for some here in the Britain (recent memories of colonialism leave me choking over the “great” and the “kingdom”). Meanwhile British immigration legislation regresses “ and feeds into the myths and racist assumptions about immigrants living of the state and taking “our jobs. The Labour government plans to introduce more “tests to prove their worth” for anyone wanting to become British fortunately there is resistance from some back benchers.

Ms Smith said migrants from outside the European Economic Area [ Political speak for unwanted especially Muslims] would be encouraged to “move on” through a system that leads to citizenship - or choose ultimately to leave the country.

The package of measures includes:

* Raising visa fees for a special “transitional impact” fund

* More English language testing ahead of nationality

* Requirements to prove integration into communities

* Increasing how long it takes to become British

*** The Zimbabwe elections are due to take place on the 29th March and the big question is how “free and fair” they will be. Sokwanele reports on the recent jeering by crowds as Mugabe celebrated his 84th birthday

While the protestors danced and sang, a helium-filled blimp was raised 100 metres above the bridge with a banner that cast doubt on the integrity of elections due for March 29. “Free and fair or just hot air,” ran the slogan on one side of the balloon while the other called on President Mugabe to, “Have your cake… and beat it!”

*** Larry Pinkney of the Black Commentator continues to be one of the few and in my opinion rational voices in the midst of the Obama bandwagon and the myths of the “change” rhetoric. In Goose Stepping Behind Obama: The Absense of Critical Thinking Pinkney writes:

Resigning one’s self to voting for the so-called “lesser of the two evils” plays right into calculated corporate hands of media manipulations and the disempowering Democrat and Republican Parties. By the same token, euphorically goose-stepping behind the candidacy of Barack Obama, or any other Democrat or Republican, is tantamount to choosing death by hanging as opposed to death by firing squad. This is not exercising a choice. It is dangerous and ridiculous non-choice, especially in America - the so-called bastion of democracy.

Finally, Passing Thoughts by Kameelah reflects on the politics of race, passing, Islam in the US and South Africa

This choice almost immediately flung me into the forever foreigner stages whereby everyone I encountered while living in Washington D.C. to living in Cape Town, South Africa saw me not as Black but as “something else” because of course there are no Black Muslims, only African Muslims and because of course only real Muslims wore full hijab. As I learned, quite interestingly, the hijab had the power to erase elements of indigenous Blackness in favor of a more “authentic” international Blackness associated with African countries like the Sudan,

Tags:
Blogging
Black Britain
South Africa
Zimbabwe
Oxfam + NGO
US Elections

Just down the road from where I live, the recently opened Stephen Lawrence Center in Deptford was once again vandalised yesterday in a despicable racist assault.

It is as if Stephen is being murdered over and over and over - when will he be allowed to rest in peace?

Tags:
Black Britain
London + Deptford
Stephen Lawrence