***** TRUE STORY: When Turkish Embassy in DC was hosting
African-Americans for social event in 50s : it caused a diplomatic crisis.
U.S Government Officials warned Turks
not to take African-Americans in. The State Dep advised Turks to take African
Americans from the back door. Turks refused.
Then-Turkish Ambassador Munir Ertegun -Father
of Ahmet Ertegun- responded that all guests of the Turkey would enter through
the front door as equals.Police arrested the Ambassador's son, Ahmet Ertegun,
for violating segregation laws.
Turkish Embassy in DC began to host jazz
concerts in 1950s because the National Press Club had refused to host the jazz
concerts organized by the ambassador's son Ahmed.
The reason? The concerts were going to be
open for Black Americans.
Why does it take so long for these types of incidents to come to light.
Haiti 8-years?
Will Ebola financial mishandling take more then 5 to 8 years to come to light for Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Liberia? Possible 12-years or more?
WHO MONITORS AND EVALUATES THESE ORGANIZATIONS IMMEDIATELY?
Could an unbiased professional entity or organization be utilized to immediatly address issue to evaluate and monitor OXFAM, Save the Children, even the United Nations? YES. IT ALREADY EXISTS. =======================================
The 11 cities most likely to run out of drinking water - like Cape Town
11 February 2018
A quarter of the world's major cities face a situation of water stress
Cape Town is in the unenviable situation of being the first major city in the modern era to face the threat of running out of drinking water.
However, the plight of the drought-hit South African city is just one extreme example of a problem that experts have long been warning about - water scarcity.
Despite covering about 70% of the Earth's surface, water, especially drinking water, is not as plentiful as one might think. Only 3% of it is fresh.
Over one billion people lack access to water and another 2.7 billion find it scarce for at least one month of the year. A 2014 survey of the world's 500 largest cities estimates that one in four are in a situation of "water stress"
According to UN-endorsed projections, global demand for fresh water will exceed supply by 40% in 2030, thanks to a combination of climate change, human action and population growth.
It shouldn't be a surprise, then, that Cape Town is just the tip of the iceberg. Here are the other 11 cities most likely to run out of water.
1. São Paulo
Brazil's financial capital and one of the 10 most populated cities in the world went through a similar ordeal to Cape Town in 2015, when the main reservoir fell below 4% capacity.
At the height of the crisis, the city of over 21.7 million inhabitants had less than 20 days of water supply and police had to escort water trucks to stop looting.
It is thought a drought that affected south-eastern Brazil between 2014 and 2017 was to blame, but a UN mission to São Paulo was critical of the state authorities "lack of proper planning and investments".
The water crisis was deemed "finished" in 2016, but in January 2017 the main reserves were 15% below expected for the period - putting the city's future water supply once again in doubt.
2. Bangalore
Local officials in the southern Indian city have been bamboozled by the growth of new property developments following Bangalore's rise as a technological hub and are struggling to manage the city's water and sewage systems.
To make matters worse, the city's antiquated plumbing needs an urgent upheaval; a report by the national government found that the city loses over half of its drinking water to waste.
Like China, India struggles with water pollution and Bangalore is no different: an in-depth inventory of the city's lakes found that 85% had water that could only be used for irrigation and industrial cooling.
Not a single lake had suitable water for drinking or bathing.
The World Bank classifies water scarcity as when people in a determined location receive less than 1,000 cubic metres of fresh water per person a year.
In 2014, each of the more than 20 million inhabitants of Beijing had only 145 cubic metres.
China is home to almost 20% of the world's population but has only 7% of the world's fresh water.
A Columbia University study estimates that the country's reserves declined 13% between 2000 and 2009.
And there's also a pollution problem. Official figures from 2015 showed that 40% of Beijing's surface water was polluted to the point of not being useful even for agriculture or industrial use.
The Chinese authorities have tried to address the problem by creating massive water diversion projects. They have also introduced educational programmes, as well as price hikes for heavy business users.
4. Cairo
Once crucial to the establishment of one of the world's greatest civilisations, the River Nile is struggling in modern times.
It is the source of 97% of Egypt's water but also the destination of increasing amounts of untreated agricultural, and residential waste.
World Health Organization figures show that Egypt ranks high among lower middle-income countries in terms of the number of deaths related to water pollution.
The UN estimates critical shortages in the country by 2025.
Like many coastal cities, the Indonesian capital faces the threat of rising sea levels.
But in Jakarta the problem has been made worse by direct human action. Because less than half of the city's 10 million residents have access to piped water, illegal digging of wells is rife. This practice is draining the underground aquifers, almost literally deflating them.
As a consequence, about 40% of Jakarta now lies below sea level, according to World Bank estimates.
To make things worse, aquifers are not being replenished despite heavy rain because the prevalence of concrete and asphalt means that open fields cannot absorb rainfall.
6. Moscow
One-quarter of the world's fresh water reserves are in Russia, but the country is plagued by pollution problems caused by the industrial legacy of the Soviet era.
That is specifically worrying for Moscow, where the water supply is 70% dependent on surface water.
Official regulatory bodies admit that 35% to 60% of total drinking water reserves in Russia do not meet sanitary standards
According to official Turkish government figures, the country is technically in a situation of a water stress, since the per capita supply fell below 1,700 cubic metres in 2016.
Local experts have warned that the situation could worsen to water scarcity by 2030.
In recent years, heavily populated areas like Istanbul (14 million inhabitants) have begun to experience shortages in the drier months.
The city's reservoir levels declined to less than 30 percent of capacity at the beginning of 2014.
8. Mexico City
Water shortages are nothing new for many of the 21 million inhabitants of the Mexican capital.
One in five get just a few hours from their taps a week and another 20% have running water for just part of the day.
The city imports as much as 40% of its water from distant sources but has no large-scale operation for recycling wastewater. Water losses because of problems in the pipe network are also estimated at 40%.
9. London
Of all the cities in the world, London is not the first that springs to mind when one thinks of water shortages.
The reality is very different. With an average annual rainfall of about 600mm (less than the Paris average and only about half that of New York), London draws 80% of its water from rivers (the Thames and Lea).
According to the Greater London Authority, the city is pushing close to capacity and is likely to have supply problems by 2025 and "serious shortages" by 2040.
It looks likely that hosepipe bans could become more common in the future.
The Japanese capital enjoys precipitation levels similar to that of Seattle on the US west coast, which has a reputation for rain. Rainfall, however, is concentrated during just four months of the year.
That water needs to be collected, as a drier-than-expected rainy season could lead to a drought. At least 750 private and public buildings in Tokyo have rainwater collection and utilisation systems.
Home to more than 30 million people, Tokyo has a water system that depends 70% on surface water (rivers, lakes, and melted snow).
Recent investment in the pipeline infrastructure aims also to reduce waste by leakage to only 3% in the near future.
11. Miami
The US state of Florida is among the five US states most hit by rain every year. However, there is a crisis brewing in its most famous city, Miami.
An early 20th Century project to drain nearby swamps had an unforeseen result; water from the Atlantic Ocean contaminated the Biscayne Aquifer, the city's main source of fresh water.
Although the problem was detected in the 1930s, seawater still leaks in, especially because the American city has experienced faster rates of sea level rise, with water breaching underground defence barriers installed in recent decades.
Neighbouring cities are already struggling. Hallandale Beach, which is just a few miles north of Miami, had to close six of its eight wells due to saltwater intrusion.
Black
Panther has
the potential to be as consequential a film as 1915’s Birth
of a Nation.
Just as that film wrote the cinematic narrative for the relentless portrayal of
Black people as sub-human, Black
Panther has
opened the door to a new narrative that portrays Black people as fully human
beings.
With
a cast of extraordinarily beautiful Black women and men from across the African
Diaspora delivering magnificent performances, and a script that is
thought-provoking, funny, and inspiring, with many lines that really hit the
spot for us as Black people, Black
Panther
is a fantastic movie.
Can
we just take a moment to appreciate all these beautiful Black actors. I am
blinded by the beauty, where are my SHADES?!?!"
Black
Panther
has set the stage for a new era in film history--one in which Black people might
routinely create movies that show Black life and culture in all its richness and
complexity. For that, the film’s producers, writers, director, and actors
deserve the deepest thanks of all Black people.
In
the words of Marcus Garvey:
In
one fell swoop, Black
Panther
gives us a glimpse of both that history and that future. It invites us to think
about the possibilities of creating a Wakanda-like existence for ourselves and
our children.
The
movie creates a beautiful world for Black people to inhabit—a world that helps
us imagine what our lives as Africans could have been had it not been for the
great European disruption of nearly 600 years ago. Black
Panther makes
us long for that world and may, in so doing, encourage us to do the long-overdue
work necessary to empower us to create that world.
Garvey
said that in order to create the beautiful future that is our destiny, we must
“emancipate ourselves from mental slavery.” We must free ourselves from the
poisonous lie that Whiteness is superior to Blackness.
The
urgent question implicit in Black
Panther
is this: Why is it that the fictional world of Wakanda stands alone as a symbol
of Black preeminence, and why is it that in this real world that we live in
today, there is no Black country like Wakanda?
This
is no accident. For nearly 600 years, we Black people have been living our lives
according to a narrative written for us by Europeans to serve their economic
interests. In their narrative, as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, everything
Black is “ugly and evil,” and everything White is “pure, high and clean.” This
narrative is grounded in the lies of White superiority and Black inferiority and
was created to justify the enslavement of African people and the economic
exploitation of Africa, the richest continent on the face of the earth.
The
European narrative created a hierarchy of humanity with White people at the top
and Black people at the bottom and sometimes even outside of the circle of
humanity. These lies convinced the world that nothing good comes out of Africa
and that Black people are not as beautiful, intelligent, lovable, capable,
worthy or valuable as White people. These lies objectified, commodified, and
dehumanized people of African ancestry.
As
a result, for almost a millennium, all over the world, the advantages conferred
by “Whiteness” and the disadvantages imposed by “Blackness” have been
multiplying. This is why, all around the world, Black communities are
under-developed and Black lives do not matter as much as White lives.
Once
we see how this narrative, grounded in lies, has been shaping our lives, we can
begin the intentional and systematic work of rejecting it, in favor a narrative
that we write for ourselves—a narrative grounded in the truth of our dignity and
humanity as people of African ancestry.
Racism
against Black people stands on a foundation built by the lies of White
superiority and Black inferiority. The characters in Black
Panther
evince no sense of being inferior to anyone. That is a big part of what makes it
such a beautiful movie.
It
is also what could make it a great impetus for what the global Black community
needs most right now: a movement for emotional emancipation, a movement to free
all people of African ancestry from the lies –once and for all.
Join
Community Healing Network in creating a Wakanda-like world in which Black people
are free not only in body, but also in mind and spirit-- a world in which Black
people everywhere have moved beyond surviving to flourishing.
Let
us know what you think! Tune
in every tuesday for Let’s
Talk Tuesdays.