However, as society became enlightened by education and gained knowledge that whites were not superior and that their skin pigmentation was not the the yardstick of beauty most African women abandoned the practice of bleaching their skin but in some countries such as Nigeria and Zaire men and women continue to bleach their skin. I was watching music videos by zairean musicians and that is when I noticed most performers in the band were of light skin pigmentation and after further inquiry I realized it was due to bleaching of skin.

So my question is how wide spread is the skin bleaching madness among africans in Africa and Diaspora? Do you know some one who bleaches their skin

Frantz Fanon did not prescribe violence. He diagnosed it
Cesaire taught Fanon at the Lycee Schoelcher in Martinique, and his compelling, highly emotive manipulation of the French language left a lasting impression on his student. At times, Fanon appears to be making a statement when in actual fact he is either describing a situation, as it exists, or making a dramatic claim, only to recant it in another section, as if he were writing scenes in a play.

In a February 2002 National Post column, “Frantz Fanon: A Poisonous Thinker Who Refuses to Die,” writer Robert Fulford claimed that “it was Fanon who brought into modern culture the idea that violence can heal the spiritually wounded,” and that Fanon “argued that violence was necessary to Third World peoples not just as a way to win their liberty but, even more, because it would cure the inferiority complex that had been created by the teachings of white men.”

He also informed us that The Wretched of Earth “went into six editions in Arabic,” scandalously insinuating a relationship between Arabness and violence. Fulford is sorely misguided, if not disingenuous. He perpetuates the image of Fanon as an apostle of violence. But to label Fanon as an avatar of violence is as presumptuous as labeling Fulford as a pacifist.

Much of the hullabaloo stems from passages such as the following: “At the level of individuals, violence is a cleansing force. It frees the native from his inferiority complex and from despair and inaction.” At a cursory reading, the passage appears to be a promotion of violence as cathartic release. But at a closer read, Fanon’s language is very specific. The words “At the level of individuals” are crucial: Fanon is sharing his first-hand observations as a clinical psychiatrist. He was treating Algerian patients who were engaged in a life-and-death struggle against French settlers who had killed, brutalized, and maimed Algerian women and men. For some of them, violence was a cathartic act. Under these conditions, should we be surprised that, in absence of an impartial judiciary, police force, or any other official institutions willing to defend the rights of Algerians, some of them should take matters into their own hands?

In a chapter of The Wretched of the Earth entitled “Colonial War and Mental Disorders,” Fanon describes a series of clinical cases. One involved two Algerian brothers who had murdered their European friend. They had both lost family members at the hands of the French and appear to have killed the friend simply because he himself was French. Naturally, Fanon did not condone the arbitrary killing by the brothers. But as a psychiatrist, he sought to understand why they did it. He concluded that, like so many of his other patients, the brothers were afflicted with “psychiatric phenomena entailing disorders” that were directly linked to their colonial condition. In other words, random violence was not normal behaviour. Fanon did not prescribe violence. He diagnosed it and sought to explain it.

He cringed at wanton acts of violence and, despite his medical training, is said to have had a strong aversion to the sight of blood. And yet he could not ignore Algeria’s reality, or that of any other society where the colonizer used violence to subvert and repress the life chances of those they colonized. It is puzzling how such a common feature of colonial society has been so controversial. Violence and colonialism go hand-in- hand. Violence is not only used to subjugate colonized peoples; it conditions their very existence because it is held in reserve, for when the “the natives get out of hand.”

And just as the Americans used cannons and gunpowder to throw off the yoke of British colonialism, so too do les damnes de la terre reserve that very same right when other avenues to freedom have been blocked. This is what Fanon means when he writes of the colonized “practice of violence and… his plan for freedom.” Context is always important. Who today questions whether the Vietnamese were justified in taking up arms, to use violence, in the face of the U.S. bombs that rained down on their villages, killing and maiming tens of thousands of innocent civilians?

But there is another reason to carefully read Fanon. Most of the violence that Fanon describes in The Wretched of the Earth is fratricidal – Algerians unleashing their pent-up anguish and frustration upon one another, largely because they feel powerless to lash out against their oppressor. At a time when “black-on-black” violence routinely dominates the headlines (does “white-on-white” crime exist?), Fanon reminds us that alienation, poverty, and marginalization are responsible for many of the social and psychological ills of our time. And while it might be too formulaic to ascribe a simple cause-effect relationship to all social problems, there is no doubt that the fratricide that continues to clip so many lives in North America and Europe is directly related to high unemployment, diminished life chances, and the profound sense of social estrangement so many young people feel.

This picture is clear enough in metropolitan centres like Toronto and Montreal, or cities like London and Glasgow. Scotland’s brutal orgies of “booze and blades” among rival gangs of white youth recently led the United Nations to designate it the most violent country in the “developed” world. It is also one of Europe’s poorest countries: A quarter of Scotland’s children live in poverty and are dependent on government assistance.

Fulford believes that Fanon “has receded into history,” but this point could not be further from the truth. Fanon continues to resonate with the oppressed and dispossessed of the world. He has been the subject of at least two films, with another one soon to be released by Danny Glover’s company, Louverture Films. His ideas are studied in departments of philosophy and political science, and in post-colonial and cultural studies programs, all over the world. His influence in the field of psychiatry and psychology is growing, and a steady flow of Fanon biographies and anthologies suggests that, despite the tremendous impact of his writing in the 1960s and 1970s, we are only now beginning to understand the breadth and depth of his ideas.

When Fulford suggested that Fanon’s ideas stubbornly evade death, he is right. Like a festering wound that refuses to heal, the inequalities that Fanon so vividly denounced are still with us today. Like Lennie, who played his part in wiping the fog from our eyes, the ghost of Fanon continues to haunt us, not as a spooky apparition but as one who challenges us to imagine that another world is possible, and to concretely commit ourselves to bringing that world into being.

by David Austin

The latest embrassement endured by the PM over the Kazi kwa Vijana scandal was due to Caroli and Isahkiah incompetence and mismanagement of the programme. The Prime Minister had to take the bullet and use his political skill to survive the scandal that was giving his opponents a chance to finally crucify him.

Right now Kibaki and Raila have a gentleman truce to work together but as next year starts things will change as Kibaki will come under a lot of  pressure from his camp to give them a free reign to take on Raila Politically. Being Kenya politics are personality based the PM still needs someone of Miguna miguna calibre to defend him.

However, this won’t be possible until Raila interests align with those who are working for him at the OPM. Since this not going to happen the only solution is the PM to fire all his front office and bring a Mr fix it. Who is the MR fix it? in 2002 Salim Lone was the person but i think he is not available and so it is time for Raila to look far and wide and bring a real Administrator close to Muthaura type and let his polical advisor do what strategist do ruffle feathers, pull tricks and make sure that the political magic hat is alway equiped with rabbits

UNEDITED

http://www.notablebiographies.com/newsmakers2/2006-A-Ec/Biya-Paul.html

Robert Mugabe aka Comrade Bob

This one has defied all manners of sanctions, interventions his addiction to power and his ability to be the cunning fox has earned him the title of the Last of Mohicans. Since 1983 Comrade bob is still lording over Zimbabwe.  According to pundits the only way out for nester Mugabe to leave power is via the Pine box. At least MDC has tried but it is no match to the brutal machinery of ZANU..Next year is make or break year for Mugabe if he wins the elections then he will become  president for life

Then  doctors and nurses can go have their salaries determined by market forces rather by technorants at the health ministry.