modem slavery

Hey, watch this:  http://www.ted.com/talks/lisa_kristine_glimpses_of_modern_day_slavery?language=en

Do They Know its Christmas? Just say'n?

The article I am posting this week highlights the negative impact the the most well meaning act of self-perceived altruism can have on people. The story highlights the fact that the two hit songs from the eighties, ":Do they know its Christmas": and "we are the world" were actually deleterious to the very situations they set out to help in the first place. perhaps Americans and Westerns should keep a mindfulness of unintended consequences when it comes to their typical heavy handed approaches.Just my two cents. Here ya' go: Maybe We Aren't The World

Modern Gold In South Africa

       The article I am posting this week is about the modern day gold mining that is going on in the recently shut down mines that pock the landscape all over the region of South Africa. The gold in the area is very hard to get out of the ground without expensive equipment but the article follows "illegal miners" as they live under the ground sometimes for months at times risking their lives for a few specs of gold in hopes of sustaining their families. You can access the article here: African Gold

"Chocolate City"

The article I am posting this week is about African immigrants to China, which I didn't even know was a thing. The wave of African immigrates to China started around the 90's and has more or less continued unabated since. The majority of the immigrants live in a very small concentrated residential area in the city of Guangzhou, Chinas third largest city.Check out the article here at: China

African Colonialism and HIV

The article I found this week is about the spread of HIV through the colonization of Africa. The source and consequent spread of HIV has long been sought so that scientist and doctors may be able to isolate the exact strain that jumped from chimpanzee to human, ultimately in hopes of creating a vaccine or at the very least some new treatments. The article highlights the evolution of the virus and effect that colonization had on its spread. The most interesting thing that it points out is that had it not been for African colonization the virus could have and most likely would have died in the jungles of Cameroon long ago. You can acsess the artical here: African Colonization

Fighting To Protect Ancient Manuscripts

The article that I have found this week is about the city of Timbuktu and its ancient manuscripts. The locals there have a very rich written history and are very proud of the written texts which they have. The average people in the city are in fact so fond of these works that they have for years buried them in the floors of their houses and plastered them into the walls, all in an attempt to protect them from which ever army has decided to invade them this week.Timbuktu is in the country of Mali which is in civil war and being divided up into the north and the south of the country. The article talks about how a librarian and a security guard smuggled thousands of these ancient texts out of the library in burlap sacks loaded into donkey carts before the invading jihadist could collect and burn them. From there they brought them by boat down the Niger river to safety. This is truly an incredible story and is sure to make any bibliophile smile. You can access the article here: Timbuktu

modern immigration from Africa

This week we discussed the slave trade and it's impact on Africa.  The article I am posting states a curious title.  More Africans have immigrated to the United States in the recent years than came over as a result of the slave trade. The most interesting point the article makes is that the group of immigrantsnow being admitted is being selected for by ambition. The recent immigrants from Africa collectively had a higher percentage of college degrees than did their American born counterparts. You can access the article here at: http://www.theroot.com/articles/culture/2014/09/more_africans_immigrated_to_the_us_from_2000_2010_than_came_by_slaveship.html?wpisrc=burger

Kennewick Man and First Inhabitants of America

      The article I posted this week talks about the Kennewick man. This name refers to a partial skeleton that was found in Kennewick Washington and has, since its discovery, challenged everything we know and presently understand about the peopling of North America. The skull recovered from the site tested much older than anticipated after radio carbon dating and had completely different features than expected. Do to N.A.GR.P.A all human remains older than a couple thousand years are assumed to be those of  "Native Americans" and therefor must be returned to the nearest tribe for proper burial. This his created huge amount of conflict as the skeleton had some particular features that were more European in nature and therefor challenged the idea that all early people of North America came over on the land bridge formed during the last ice age. perhaps the whole theory about the spread of humans across the planet needs to be rethought out and without pivotal evidence we may never know the actual truth. You can access the article here at: Kennewick man

African Rock Art Collection

               I found this article on African rock art from the British Museum. It is a collective project that is attempting to build a huge collection of rock art from all of the continent. The collection is somewhat in its infancy as they only have the North of Africa put together yet but it is still a massive and impressive collection. Some of the photographs are of not the best quality but I would imagine that some of them came from a slightly less than hospitable location.They have the collection broken down by country and much of the same themes seem to run throughout. I instantly wondered if one could be able to trace the migration and colonization patterns across Africa through the art. One can obviously see the major lifestyles portrayed, like pastoralism and farming but to trace peoples migrations through their art, that would be amazing. This is something I will check back into at a later date as I was really interested in some of the art from the countries, like mali and the congo region, that they have not cataloged as of yet. The project can be found by clicking here: African Rock Art Project.

Sentenced to Death for Her Faith

                 Having read the chapter about christianity and Islam in North Africa I was reminded immediately of the recent news story about the christian women from Sudan whom had been sentenced to death for not renouncing her faith. It  is hard to imagine that these types of things, that sound rather antiquated or barbaric in nature, still happen, but they do and  I would wager that they occur with much more frequency than you or I would ever care to imagine.
               The article states that the women was a Sudanese christian who was born to a christian women and a Muslim father. The father left the family when she was at very young age. Because of the patriarchal culture in Sudan the woman's faith was assumed to be Islam, that of her fathers. But we find that she was raised her mother, who was indeed a christian and raised her within that faith. I also found it very interesting that she was ultimately allowed to immigrate to the United States, in spite of a round of new trumped up charges by the Sudanese government. Of all the things that are questionable about the current United States foreign policy, we can still say that our doors will always be open to refugees; religious or otherwise.


http://www.cnn.com/2014/07/31/us/new-hampshire-sudanese-woman/