Dec. 26, 2016

Why African-Americans Should Care About Aleppo
By Dr. Wilmer J. Leon, III

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - "If we are to have peace on earth, our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Our loyalties must transcend our race, our tribe, our class, and our nation; and this means we must develop a world perspective... It really boils down to this: that all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied into a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. We are made to live together because of the interrelated structure of reality." - Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. “A Christmas Sermon on Peace” 1967

First, some background and context. Aleppo is a city in Syria.  Syria, officially known as the Syrian Arab Republic, is a country in Western Asia, bordering Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea to the west, Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east, Jordan to the south, and Israel to the southwest.

For centuries Aleppo was the largest city in Syria; the third largest in the Ottoman Empire after Constantinople and Cairo.  According to the BBC, “Aleppo, or "Halab" in Arabic, is one of world's oldest continually inhabited cities, being mentioned in Egyptian texts from the 20th Century BC.”

The president of Syria is Bashar al-Assad.  He was elected president when he ran unopposed after the death of his father, the previous president Hafez al-Assad died in June of 2000.  It is important to know that al-Assad is an Alawite Shia Muslim.  This community is a minority faction in Syria.

Syria is an ally with Russia.  Their relationship goes as far back as 1947.  Syria sided with the USSR against the United States during the Cold War. In 1971 former president Hafez al-Assad allowed the USSR to open a naval base in Tartus.  This base provides Russia a stable presence from which to operate in the Middle East and is Russia's only naval facility in the Mediterranean region and only remaining military facility outside the former USSR.  Obviously, this naval base and the relationship with Syria are very important to Russia and its president Vladimir Putin. President Putin is also concerned that Chechen rebels who are fighting in Syria will return to Russia and threaten him.  Syria is also aligned with Iran, as well as Lebanon's Iranian-backed Hezbollah militant group.

The relationships in this region are very complex.  They not only involve nations but religions and ethnic groups as well.  Suffice it to say, just from the perspective of the national governments involved, with the United States being allied with Israel, any conflict involving Syria will become a proxy conflict between The United States and Russia. President Putin is using Syria as a way to demonstrate to the world that contrary to President Obama’s belief, Russia is a little more than just a “regional power”.  Russia is a major player in the Middle East.

Bashar’s father Hafez ran a very tightly controlled and repressive government.  As a minority Alawite Shia he needed the support of a loyal and repressive military and business interests to stay in power.  When Bashar came to power, he implemented a brief period of change.  He eased restrictions on the press, released some political prisoners and tolerated a small amount of political debate.

These changes made the minority Alawites and the military very nervous.  They feared Bashar’s attempts at a more open society would result in a call for increased political power and threaten the minority Alawite control over the country.

As the Arab Spring in Tunisia and Egypt spread to Syria, President Bashar al-Assad reversed course and ordered his military and police forces to crush the Sunni dominated dissent.  This has led to what we now know as the Syrian Civil War.

The Syrian Civil War has also become tide to the battle with ISIL, the Kurd’s fight for autonomy in Turkey and other struggles in the region.  As stated above, the relationships in this region are very complex.  They not only involve nations but religions and ethnic groups as well.

Why should African Americans care? The fear of an Alawite minority of losing control of a Sunni majority is very similar to the European American fear of the “browning of America”. According to NPR, “Non-whites now make up a majority of kindergartners; by the next presidential election, the Census Bureau predicts they will be a majority of all children; and by 2044, no one racial group will be a majority of the country.”  White Americans are losing their demographic dominance of America and many are losing their minds.  Hence, the politics of resentment of an African American president contributing to the election of a totally inept and unqualified, race baiting, misogynist, narcissistic and xenophobic Donald Trump.

Given this backdrop, why should African-Americans care about Aleppo and the Syrian Civil War?  First because it is a tragedy that all in the human family should be concerned about. The U.N. estimates about 400,000 people have been killed in Aleppo since the battle first started back in March 2011.  More recently, at least 463 civilians, including 62 children, were killed in eastern Aleppo since mid-November, according to data collected by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.  According to “I Am Syria” 50,000 children have died as a result of the larger Syrian Civil War.  We must develop a world perspective.

Why should we care?  Dr. King said that war is an enemy of the poor.  In the broader context of the Middle East, according to a report published by Brown University, “US spending on Middle East wars, Homeland Security will reach $4.79 trillion in 2017.” The US can spend trillions in the Middle East and can’t provide potable water to a small town in its Midwest.

According to The Guardian, “The infrastructure fixes to the city’s [Flint, Mich.] water system over the next several decades [is] at an estimated cost of at least $216m.”  This is a drop in the proverbial bucket [no pun intended] to what America is wasting on wars it created and conflicts that its failed policies are exacerbating. As Dr. King said in “Time to Break Silence”, “Then came the buildup in Vietnam (War on Terror), and I watched this program broken and eviscerated, as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war, and I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam (War on Terror) continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube. “

I should discuss the impact that the Syrian refugee crisis is having around the world but that will be another article at another time.

As the battle for Aleppo wages on and Middle East conflict(s) continue to escalate, in a Trump administration, who will be called upon to fight these wars? As Minister Louis Farrakhan said to President George W. Bush, “America, you can’t win this with your technology…eventually you will have to send your troops in here…and when you do, they will deal with you.”

Why should we care about Aleppo?

Dr. King said in “Time to Break Silence”: “Perhaps a more tragic recognition of reality took place when it became clear to me that the war was doing far more than devastating the hopes of the poor at home. It was sending their sons and their brothers and their husbands to fight and to die in extraordinarily high proportions relative to the rest of the population. We were taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem.”

Will it be your son or daughter that President Trump sends to fight? Rest assured, Ivanka, Don, Jr. and Eric won’t be going. They are busy.

Why should African-Americans care about Aleppo?...Because it matters!

Dr. Wilmer Leon is the Producer/ Host of the nationally broadcast call-in talk radio program “Inside the Issues with Wilmer Leon,” on SiriusXM Satellite radio channel 126. Go to www.wilmerleon.com or email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. www.twitter.com/drwleon and Dr. Leon’s Prescription at Facebook.com © 2016 InfoWave Communications, LLC

Dec. 26, 2016

Bias Hinders Diversity in Hiring for Environmental Organizations
By Anthony Advincula

Dec. 26, 2016

Jars of Soil from sites where Blacks were lynched.

Memorial to Elias Clayton, Elmer Jackson and Isaac McGhee, three Black men who were lynched in Duluth, Minn.

Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from NorthStarNewsToday.com

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - The Equal Justice Initiative, a nonprofit organization that provides legal representation to indigent defendants and prisoners denied fair and just treatment in the legal system, intends to open in 2018 the first national memorial to African-American victims of lynchings.

The memorial will be located on six acres in Montgomery, Ala., where EJI is headquartered, the organization said in its 2016 annual report. EJI has reported that nearly 4,000 Black men, women and children were lynched, burned alive, shot to death, drowned and beaten to death by White mobs between 1877 and 1950 in 12 southern states.

The memorial, however, will record terror lynchings in every county throughout the United States, not just in the South. For example, on June 15, 1920, a mob lynched three Black men—Elias Clayton, Elmer Jackson and Isaac McGhee—for allegedly raping a white woman in Duluth, Minn., according to the book “The Lynchings in Duluth,” published by the Minnesota Historical Society Press.

The woman claimed she had been attacked. A physician who examined her said nothing indicated she had been sexually assaulted. In 2003, Duluth erected a memorial honoring Clayton, Jackson and McGhee. Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith were African-American men who were lynched on August 7, 1930, in Marion, Ind., after being  dragged from jail and beaten by a mob for allegedly murdering a White couple. James Cameron, 16, a third person, narrowly escaped being murdered by the mob; he was helped by the intervention of an unknown woman and returned to the safety of his jail cell. He was later convicted and sentenced as an accessory before the fact. After dedicating his life to civil rights activism, he was pardoned in 1999 by the state of Indiana.

Cameron founded America’s Black Holocaust Museum in Milwaukee, Wisc. Cameron died on June 11, 2006.The local chapter of the NAACP and the State’s Attorney General struggled to indict some of the Marion lynch mob, but no one was ever charged for the murders of Shipp and Smith, or the attack on Cameron.

Lynchings of Black men were mostly carried out to protect the perceived sanctity of White women. Otis Price of Perry, Fla., was murdered by a White mob on Aug. 9, 1938, for walking past a white farmer’s home while the farmer’s wife was bathing in an open doorway, according to EJI.The organization has found locations where lynchings occurred. Thousands of volunteers for EJI have collected soil from over 300 lynching sites as part of the organization’s Community Remembrance Project.

The jars of soil are exhibited at EJI.  Each jar bears the name of a man, woman, or child lynched in America, as well as the date and location of the lynching. EJI recently released a study about Black military veterans targeted for lynching. The report’s title is “Lynching in America: Targeting Black Veterans.” It builds on EJI’s 2015 report, “Lynching in America:  Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror.”

December 26, 2016

Facing a 'Trial of Strength in the Streets', Crisis Grows for Congo's Kabila

(TriceEdneyWire.com/GIN)– Congolese President Joseph Kabila is facing a ‘trial of strength in the streets’ if he stays in office beyond the constitutionally-mandated deadline of this week, say critics of the two-term leader who appears to be digging in for the long term.

Popular opposition leader Moise Katumbi has called on Kabila to step down before he becomes “an illegitimate” ruler.

Meanwhile, demonstrators in the districts of Kalamu, Matete and Lingwala and at Kinshasa University blew whistles to signal to Kabila that it was time to leave.

Earlier, hundreds of anti-Kabila demonstrators defied a ban on marches as security forces faced off against groups waving red cards saying "Bye, bye Kabila."

Presidential advisor Barnabe Kikaya downplayed the signs of discontent. “The constitution clearly states that the president remains in his position until his successor is elected by the people of the Congo, not by a loud and insistent mob,” he said dismissively.

Congo has never had a peaceful transfer of power since independence from Belgium in 1960. Observers fear the current political crisis could trigger a repeat of civil wars that killed millions of people between 1996 and 2003.

After 15 years, Kabila has become the symbol of stagnation and societal ills. The most prominent grievances are unemployment, corruption and lack of access to education, electricity, roads and transport. Rising inflation further worsens precarious living conditions.

But perhaps most shocking is a recent expose of Kabila’s personal “business networks” including some 70 companies controlled by the President, his wife, two children and eight of his siblings.

In the expose by Bloomberg News investigators, with support from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, it was revealed that Kabila companies control diamond permits that stretch more than 450 miles across the country’s southern border with Angola. The Kabilas own more than 120 permits to dig gold, diamonds, copper, cobalt and other minerals.

Family members also have stakes in banks, farms, fuel distributors, airline operators, a road builder, hotels, a pharmaceutical supplier, travel agencies, boutiques and nightclubs. Another venture even tried to launch a rat into space on a rocket.

The exact value of the businesses isn’t known but publicly accessible documents reveal investments worth more than $30 million in just two companies, the investigative reporters found. Estimated revenue for another company exceeds $350 million over four years—while nearly two-thirds of the 77 million people live on less than $1.90 per day.

All in all, the Kabilas network of businesses has brought hundreds of millions of dollars to the family – which may explain why the president is ignoring pleas by the U.S., the European Union and a majority of the Congolese people to hand over power and avoid the kind of chaos that cost millions of lives after his father took power nearly two decades ago.

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