From the Inbox - Why the Everglades are not a sewer

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The Everglades—Saved By The Law Florida’s Everglades would likely be a corporate sewer today if not for the power of litigation and the Earthjustice attorneys who have wielded it for 20 years. These truths were attested to at a conference of powerful political, business and environmental leaders who paid homage to those attorneys. Read Full Story. Check out a special report on the two-decade fight to save the Everglades. Support Us! Help our legal experts fight in court to protect and restore the Everglades ecosystem. Give an urgent gift today to protect this national treasure!

Keeping Tahoe Blue Community members and conservationists are hoping to keep the sparkle in one of America’s most beautiful lakes—Lake Tahoe—by halting a large, proposed housing development along the shoreline. On their behalf, Earthjustice has filed a lawsuit challenging the environmental impact report for the Homewood development. Read More Photo Slideshow: Images Of Lake Tahoe A Gathering Storm In Congress The halls of Congress are silent right now—in sharp contrast to the anti-environment uproar that dominated the last session. More is coming in this election year, but it’s no reason to be gloomy, says Earthjustice President Trip Van Noppen. Read More Thousands Comment On Fracking Plans Just as the comment period ended this week, thousands of activists submitted comments against New York State’s proposed regulations on hydrofracturing. Earthjustice activists submitted more than 5,000 letters, helping to set a new record of submitted comments to the state agency. Read More

From Earthjustice’s blog: The Zuke: Let’s not nuke the Grand Canyon. Read Blog Post Monday Reads: Climate change makes strange bedfellows. Read Blog Post

Earthjustice and its allies won advances—or outright victories—across a broad front: EPA Reins In Toxic Power Plants After a decade of legal effort by Earthjustice, the EPA has set the first limits on mercury, arsenic and other toxic air pollutants from coal- and oil-fired power plants—the nation’s worst toxic air polluters. Read More Feature: In the Shadow of a Smokestack Photo Slideshow: Life Under The Stacks Salmon May Benefit From Ruling Weak development standards in Clark County, Washington appear to violate federal clean water regulations, according to a federal court ruling obtained through Earthjustice litigation. The county’s poor standards contribute to polluted storm water runoff that threatens salmon. Read More Aviation Emissions Law Takes Off Beginning this year, all flights using European airports will be held accountable for their carbon pollution. The new European Union law went into effect, after a decision by the EU Court of Justice affirmed that the law is fully compliant with international law. A trans-Atlantic coalition of environmental groups, including Earthjustice, were intervenor-defendants in the litigation. Read More Audio: Attorney Martin Wagner Comments Fossil Fuel Power Comes Last Under a new—landmark—clean energy policy, California utilities cannot use fossil fuel-generated electricity to meet customer demand until they first employ energy efficiency and conservation, and seek energy from such renewable sources as wind, solar and geothermal. Read More Ruling Shines On Hawai`i Solar Roof-top solar energy got a boost from the Hawaii Public Utilities Commission, which has denied proposals by utility companies to make it difficult for homes and businesses to install solar systems. Earthjustice represented Hawaii Solar Energy Association in the case. Read More Take Action! Protect Our Water! The drinking water of 117 million Americans is at risk from pollution and contamination. The White House has promised to fix this, but big polluters are trying to thwart progress. Urge the White House to continue its strong efforts to restore our clean water protections. Take action now to protect our communities and our clean water for drinking, swimming, and fishing!

Connect Join us on Facebook! Follow us on Twitter! Watch us on YouTube! Earthjustice. Because the earth needs a good lawyer. Earthjustice is the nation’s leading, non-profit law firm for the environment. To learn more about our work, visit our website, http://earthjustice.org. Large Print Version -Click to read e.Brief in large print. Photo Credits -The Everglades—Saved By The Law: Left: Gorazd Bozic / Flickr. Right: Amir / Flickr. Keeping Tahoe Blue: Geoff Stearns / Flickr. Thousands Comment On Fracking Plans: Chris Jordan-Bloch / Earthjustice. EPA Reins In Toxic Power Plants: Chris Jordan-Bloch / Earthjustice. ©2012 Earthjustice | 50 California Street, Suite 500, San Francisco, CA 94111 | 1-800-584-6460 | enews@earthjustice.org

Etta James: Rebel Till The End

Etta James: Rebel Till The End

By Norman (Otis) Richmond aka Jalali

Six men are locked into a Hollywood hotel suite. One is the marvellous Marvin Gaye. The other is the suave, cosmopolitan and debonair Harvey Fugua, the legendary founder of the vocal group the Moonglows and record executive for both Chess and Motown Records. At this moment in history they are a part of Motown royalty both having married Gordy sisters.

Rhongea Southern (now Daar Malik El-Bey), Carl Dyce (the late Sigidi Abdullah), the late Harold Clayton and myself were there auditing for Motown. Gaye and Fugua are the talent scouts.

Our audition is interrupted by a long distance call from Etta James. James, who is calling all the way from Chicago. In the mid 60s this the equivalent of receiving a call from Dar es Salaam, Tanzania as far as we were concerned. We were impressed to say the least. All the guys in the group loved Ms. James. We were all from the same bowl of grits. Like us she was from Angel Town.

James lost her battle with Leukaemia on January 20,2012. She was born Jamesetta Hawkins, on January 25,1938. The Los Angeles born James is regarded as having bridged the gap between rhythm and blues and rock and roll, is the winner of six Grammys and 17 Blues Music Awards. She was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1993, the Blues Hall of fame of 2001 and the Grammy Hall of Fame both in 1999 and 2008. Rolling Stone ranked James number 22 on the list of the 100 Greatest Singers of All Time and number 62 on the list of the 100 Greatest Artists.

The outspoken James said she was of two minds about being induced into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. She made her views known in her autobiography,”Rage To Survive: The Etta James Story” which she wrote along with David Ritz.

Says James, “Part of me is thrilled to be recognized, but another part resents the lily-white institution that sends down its proclamations from on high. They decide who is rock and who isn’t , they decide who is important and who isn’t. Man, I grew up with some cats who should have been inducted years ago — Jesse Belvin and Johnny “Guitar” Watson to name two”. It must be mentioned that Johnny Otis, the man she introduced when he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame died days before her on January 17th.

James attended Thomas Jefferson High School in Los Angeles along with Belvin and Watson. Jeff as it is called by Angeleos has a heavy weight cast of graduates: Noble Peace Prize Winner Ralph Bunche, Dorothy Dandridge, Alvin Ailey, Roy Ayers, Richard “Louie Louie” Berry also went there. Her life was surrounded by controversy. It was widely reported that she wanted to sing “At Last” at President Barack Obama’s inauguration. Beyonce ended up serenading President Obama and the First Lady Michelle Obama.

I saw her only one time in Toronto. Unfortunately, I never interviewed her. However, I have read and enjoyed Rage To Survive. The book reveals many little known things about Soul Sister James. She was once Jamesetta X when she joined the Nation of Islam at Temple Number 15 in Atlanta, Georgia. She says her mother use to know members of Temple 27 in Los Angeles. Sam Cooke, Hank Ballard, Barry White and others came to Temple 27 to hear Minister John Shabazz (who today is Abdul Allah Muhammad).

James’ life is African history at it’s best and worst — she witnessed many major historical developments. One example: She was staying at the Hotel Theresa in Harlem when El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz (Malcolm X) met with Cuban President Fidel Castro in September 1960. Says James, “…Fidel Castro was living up in the Theresa Hotel the same time as us. They blocked off the top six floors for him — this was in 1960 — and had coops on the roof with live chickens so he could prepare his own food. Fidel worried about being poisoned.” This is probably why he is still in the land of the living.”

After she parted company with the Nation of Islam she became part of the Ahmadiyya branch of Islam. She was influenced by her partner at the time John Lewis. “John became pious, praying five times a day. He was also urging me to become more serious. I tried and for a while I was. At the same time, running around with characters like James Brown, I got distracted.”

She was so distracted by Soul Brother Number One, that she along with Hugh Masekela, Miriam Makeba (Kwame Ture aka Stokely Carmichael) , B.B. King, Sister Sledge and Bill Withers ended up in Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) for the “Rumble in Jungle” between Muhammad Ali and George Forman. James points out, “In fact, it was a singer Lloyd Price who had first introduced (Muhammad) Ali to (Don) King.”

However, James ended up not performing. She returned to the USA because of the treatment she received from Mobutu Sese Seko aka Joseph Mobutu, the man who played a role in the assassination of the great African patriot Patrice Emery Lumumba on January 17, 1961.

Unlike many of her contemporaries she did not write off the current crop of black music makers as untalented. “I don’t subscribed to the school that says great soul music is dead. That’s usually some old fart talking, remembering his youth while forgetting that new generations are entitled to cultures of their own.”

James like all human beings had merits and demerits. However, the world will remember Etta James for vocal renditions of songs like “At Last”, “I’d Rather Go Blind”, “Sunday Kind of Love”,”I Just Want to Make Love to You” and “All I Could Do Was Cry”.

Norman (Otis) Richmond aka Jalali can be heard on Diasporic Music on Uhuru Radio www.uhururadio.com, Sunday’s 2pm to 4pm and Saturday Morning Live on Regent Radio http://www.radioregent.com/ 10am to 1pm every Saturday. The co-host of SML is Malinda Francis,@docuvixen Toronto, ON. filmmaker, telling untold stories. LiveProfile: LPL47VBO
http://www.docuvixen.com

Open Statement to the Fans of “The Help,” From the Association of BlackWomen Historians

Saturday, January 28, 2012

An Open Statement to the Fans of The Help:

On behalf of the Association of Black Women Historians (ABWH), this statement provides historical context to address widespread stereotyping presented in both the film and novel version of The Help. The book has sold over three million copies, and heavy promotion of the movie will ensure its success at the box office.

Despite efforts to market the book and the film as a progressive story of triumph over racial injustice, The Help distorts, ignores, and trivializes the experiences of black domestic workers. We are specifically concerned about the representations of black life and the lack of attention given to sexual harassment and civil rights activism.

During the 1960s, the era covered in The Help, legal segregation and economic inequalities limited black women’s employment opportunities. Up to 90 per cent of working black women in the South labored as domestic servants in white homes.

The Help’s representation of these women is a disappointing resurrection of Mammy—a mythical stereotype of black women who were compelled, either by slavery or segregation, to serve white families.

Portrayed as asexual, loyal, and contented caretakers of whites, the caricature of Mammy allowed mainstream America to ignore the systemic racism that bound black women to back-breaking, low paying jobs where employers routinely exploited them.

The popularity of this most recent iteration is troubling because it reveals a contemporary nostalgia for the days when a black woman could only hope to clean the White House rather than reside in it.

Both versions of The Help also misrepresent African American speech and culture. Set in the South, the appropriate regional accent gives way to a child-like, overexaggerated black dialect.

In the film, for example, the primary character, Aibileen, reassures a young white child that, “You is smat, you is kind, you is important.” In the book, black women refer to the Lord as the “Law,” an irreverent depiction of black vernacular. For centuries, black women and men have drawn strength from their community institutions. The black family, in particular provided support and the validation of personhood necessary to stand against adversity. We do not recognize the black community described in The Help where most of the black male characters are depicted as drunkards, abusive, or absent. Such distorted images are misleading and do not represent the historical realities of black masculinity and manhood.

Furthermore, African American domestic workers often suffered sexual harassment as well as physical and verbal abuse in the homes of white employers. For example, a recently discovered letter written by Civil Rights activist Rosa Parks indicates that she, like many black domestic workers, lived under the threat and sometimes reality of sexual assault. The film, on the other hand, makes light of black women’s fears and vulnerabilities turning them into moments of comic relief.

Similarly, the film is woefully silent on the rich and vibrant history of black Civil Rights activists in Mississippi. Granted, the assassination of Medgar Evers, the first Mississippi based field secretary of the NAACP, gets some attention.

However, Evers’ assassination sends Jackson’s black community frantically scurrying into the streets in utter chaos and disorganized confusion—a far cry from the courage demonstrated by the black men and women who continued his fight. Portraying the most dangerous racists in 1960s Mississippi as a group of attractive, well dressed, society women, while ignoring the reign of terror perpetuated by the Ku Klux Klan and the White Citizens Council, limits racial injustice to individual acts of meanness.

We respect the stellar performances of the African American actresses in this film. Indeed, this statement is in no way a criticism of their talent. It is, however, an attempt to provide context for this popular rendition of black life in the Jim Crow South.

In the end, The Help is not a story about the millions of hardworking and dignified black women who labored in white homes to support their families and communities. Rather, it is the coming-of-age story of a white protagonist, who uses myths about the lives of black women to make sense of her own. The Association of Black Women Historians finds it unacceptable for either this book or this film to strip black women’s lives of historical accuracy for the sake of entertainment.

Ida E. Jones is National Director of ABWH and Assistant Curator at Howard University.

Daina Ramey Berry, Tiffany M. Gill, and Kali Nicole Gross are Lifetime Members of ABWH and Associate Professors at the University of Texas at Austin. Janice Sumler-Edmond is a Lifetime Member of ABWH and is a Professor at Huston-Tillotson University.

Suggested Reading:

Fiction:

Like one of the Family: Conversations from A Domestic’s Life, Alice Childress

The Book of the Night Women by Marlon James

Blanche on the Lam by Barbara Neeley

The Street by Ann Petry

A Million Nightingales by Susan Straight

Non-Fiction:

Out of the House of Bondage: The Transformation of the Plantation Household by Thavolia Glymph

To Joy My Freedom: Southern Black Women’s Lives and Labors by Tera Hunter

Labor of Love Labor of Sorrow: Black Women, Work, and the Family, from Slavery to the Present by Jacqueline Jones
Living In, Living Out: African American Domestics and the Great Migration by Elizabeth Clark-Lewis

Coming of Age in Mississippi by Anne Moody

Any questions, comments, or interview requests can be sent to: ABWHTheHelp@gmail.com

NATO’s Grisly Crimes in Libya

NATO’s grisly crimes in Libya

Friday, 27 January 2012 00:00
Farirai Chubvu

While Charles Ray - the US envoy here - portrays himself as the face of the free world, a champion of human rights and democracy and has been vociferous about his country’s role in the Libyan invasion, it turns out that just like Vietnam and other illegal wars before it, Libya is turning into a major embarrassment for Uncle Sam.

A report released last week by human rights groups in the Middle East presents extensive evidence of war crimes carried out in Libya by the United States, NATO and their proxy “rebel” forces during last year’s invasion, that culminated in the murder of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi.

The “Report of the Independent Civil Society fact-finding Mission to Libya” presents findings of an investigation carried out last November by the Arab Organisation for Human Rights, together with the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights and the International Legal Assistance Consortium.

Based on interviews with victims of war crimes as well as with witnesses and Libyan officials in Tripoli, Zawiya, Sibrata, Khoms, Zliten, Misrata, Tawergha and Sirte, the report calls for the investigation of evidence that NATO targeted civilian sites, causing many deaths and injuries.

Civilian facilities targeted by NATO bombs and missiles included schools, government buildings, at least one food warehouse, and private homes.

The report also presents evidence of systematic murder, torture, expulsion and abuse of suspected Gaddafi loyalists by the NATO-backed “rebel” forces of the National Transitional Council. It describes the forced expulsion of the mostly black-skinned inhabitants of Tawergha and the ongoing persecution of sub-Saharan migrant workers by forces allied to the NTC and its transitional government.

The investigators report savage and repeated beatings of prisoners held without trial or charges, the summary execution of pro-Gaddafi fighters, and witness reports of “indiscriminate and retaliatory murders, including the ‘slaughter’ (i.e., throat slitting) of former combatants.”

The report exposes the human rights and democratic pretexts employed by the US, France, Britain and their NATO accomplices to carry out a colonial-style war of conquest. It makes clear that UN Security Council Resolution 1973, imposing a “no-fly zone” and arms embargo on Libya supposedly to protect civilians from repressive actions by Muammar Gaddafi, was in fact used to carry out a ruthless air war waged in co-ordination with “rebel” forces on the ground.

The report suggests that soon after the outbreak of anti-Gaddafi protests in Benghazi and other cities, opposition forces were receiving training from Western armed forces as well as weapons from NATO powers and allied Arab states. Opposition to Gaddafi that erupted last February following the fall of Mubarak in Egypt was rapidly taken into hand by the US, France, Britain and their agents within Libya to launch a pro-imperialist invasion.

As the report states: “From first-hand information available to the Mission, and secondary sources, it appears that NATO participated in what could be classified as offensive actions undertaken by the opposition forces, including, for example, attacks on towns and cities held by Gaddafi forces. Equally, the choice of certain targets, such as a regional food warehouse, raises prima facie questions regarding the role of such attacks with respect to the protection of civilians.”

The report gives only the palest picture of a brutal onslaught whose purpose was to turn the clock back 43 years to the conditions that prevailed under the US-UK stooge King Idris, who turned the country’s oil resources over to American and British conglomerates and allowed the two powers to maintain large military bases on Libyan soil. The mass destruction and killing, which culminated in the levelling of Sirte and lynching of Gaddafi, make the UN-sanctioned claims of a war for “human rights” and the “protection of civilians” not only absurd, but obscene.

The rape of Libya was the Anglo-Saxons response to the revolutionary uprisings that ousted long-time pro-Western regimes in Tunisia and Egypt, two countries that border Libya. The aim of the invasion was to impose complete control on the country’s oil resources, divert and suppress the growth of working class struggles throughout North Africa and the Middle East, and deal a blow to China and Russia, which had established close economic relations with the Gaddafi regime.

The war destroyed Libya. The NTC - an unstable coalition of ex-Gaddafi regime officials, Islamists, including some with links to Al Qaeda, and Western intelligence assets - itself estimates that the invasion claimed 50 000 lives and injured another 50 000. Rising infighting between the NTC’s factions is opening the door to full-scale civil war between rival clan-based and regional militias.

Just this weekend, amid warnings from NTC Chairman Mustafa Abdel Jalil of looming civil war, a crowd demanding the resignation of the transitional government forced its way into the NTC’s headquarters in Benghazi. Abdel Hafiz Ghoga, the vice president of the NTC, promptly resigned.

The report on US-NATO war crimes is also a further indictment of the assortment of “left” parties, intellectuals and academics who parroted the human rights pretexts of Washington and NATO and thus gave open or backhanded support to the invasion of Libya.
And still, the so-called International Criminal Court is deafeningly silent.

Zimbabwe Inquest Continues Into Gen. Mujuru’s Death

Mujuru family wants pathologist quizzed

Saturday, 28 January 2012 00:00
Innocent Ruwende Senior Reporter
Zimbabwe Herald

THE Mujuru family has asked the court to call in a South African forensic expert to question the local pathologist who examined the remains of General Solomon Mujuru.

The family said should questions arise, they might apply for the exhumation of the remains to enable the South African expert to conduct another examination.

This came out during the ninth day of the inquest into the death of Gen Mujuru at the Harare Magistrates’ Courts.

Gen Mujuru died in an inferno at his farmhouse in Beatrice in August last year, but policemen who testified yesterday ruled out foul play.

Presiding magistrate Mr Walter Chikwanha read out a letter from the family lawyer Mr Tekhor Kewada seeking a second pathological opinion.

He then asked Mr Kewada to justify the need for another pathologist and to state whether they had already found one.

Mr Kewada confirmed that he indeed wrote the letter on the family’s behalf and said the justification will be that various experts have different opinions.

“There is always another possibility of another expert giving a different opinion on the cases of death from such circumstances,” he said.

“From viewing records, the second pathologist may come to a different conclusion. My application is about calling a South African expert Dr Perumel. He has indicated he would be free to come to Zimbabwe.”

MUJURU INQUEST

2 assault rifles found on Mujuru bedroom floor
Mujuru evidence destroyed - fireman
Mr Kewada said Dr Perumel may or may not agree with the first pathologist and questions could arise.

“The question is whether the body be exhumed or not,” he said.

“I can only rely on what the experts would tell us. We are reliant on the opinion of the pathologist.”

In response, Mrs Sharon Fero from the Attorney-General’s Office confirmed receipt of the letter from Mr Kewada, but the State thought the family wanted the pathologist to help in questioning the evidence of the local pathologist Dr Gabriel Alviero.

Mr Chikwanha concurred with the State and said he had no application for exhumation of the remains before him.

He will rule on whether or not Dr Perumel should come in to help question Dr Alviero on Monday.

Earlier, the 28th witness in the inquest, Chief Supt Crispen Makedenge, said he requested printouts from Econet and Netone to have a look at his calls history.

He said he got the printout on September 14 of Gen Mujuru’s 0773 411 909 number, but the Netone line had been terminated.

Asked the time when Gen Mujuru last made a call, Chief Supt Makedenge said on August 15 at around 2:56pm to number 0773 381 920.

He said on the same day, Gen Mujuru received a call at around 6pm from a UK number +44208640236.

Chief Supt Makedenge said they initially thought the number of firearms recovered was 17, but when they were reassembled, 15 firearms came out.

He said others were parts to firearms.

Chief Supt Makedenge ruled out that evidence was destroyed and said all the firearms recovered were registered in Gen Mujuru’s name except for the AK47 rifle.

Mr Kewada asked Chief Supt Makedenge why the General changed his parking spot on the day in question, preferring to park on the opposite side and labour himself by going round the house and use the kitchen entrance to get into the house.

Chief Supt Makedenge said no one could give them the answer during investigations.

Mr Chikwanha asked how they managed to identify Gen Mujuru’s remains and Supt Makedenge said it was through taking a blood sample from his daughter Kumbirai and matching from his tissue.

He said the match was 99 percent.
Asked how the General met his death, Chief Supt Makedenge said he inhaled carbon monoxide.

“We do not have evidence that there was foul play even from reports I got from Zesa, Fire Brigade, Forensic Science and the post-mortem.”

Detective Inspector Admire Mutizwa, the 29th witness in the inquest from the ZRP forensics, said he examined the 15 firearms and the 6kg of ammunition found in the house.

He said the ammunition exploded as a result of heat and they took two days examining the cartridges.

Detective Insp Mutizwa said all the rifles were commercial, except for the AK47, saying most farmers were entitled to have them.

Asked by the General’s nephew Mr Mudiwa Mundawarara on the origins of the AK47 rifle, Detective Insp Mutizwa said he could have got it from the army given his status.

Gen Mujuru’s first born child Kumbirai said on the day in question, she arrived at the farm around 3:30am with her siblings after Maria Musona informed her of the incident.

She confirmed that the blood sample was taken by a police doctor which was to be matched with her father’s tissue.

Kumbirai said up to now, she does not know the results of the tests.

Dr Edward Fusire, the 31st witness who is employed by ZRP, said he is the one who took blood samples from Kumbirai which he handed over to Chief Supt Makedenge for matching.

He also said he did not know the outcome of the tests.

2 assault rifles found on Mujuru bedroom floor

Friday, 27 January 2012 00:00
Zimbabwe Herald

Innocent Ruwende Senior Reporter

TWO assault rifles were found on the floor in General Solomon Mujuru’s bedroom on the day he died in an inferno while 15 other guns were in a gun cabinet close to the bedroom.
The investigating officer, Chief Superintendent Crispen Makedenge yesterday said they recovered 17 firearms and ammunition in the house.

He was testifying in the inquest into Gen Mujuru’s death at the Harare Magistrates’ Courts.

Chief Supt Makedenge, who is the Deputy Officer Commanding Law and Order, was the 28th witness.

While being led by Mr Clemence Chimbare of the Attorney-General’s Office, he said one of the recovered guns was an AK47 rifle.

Asked where exactly they recovered the weapons, Chief Supt Makedenge said they were on the floor.

He said investigations showed that the weapons were in Gen Mujuru’s fitted wardrobe which was destroyed by fire.

“In total, there were 17 guns,” he said.

“Except for those found on the floor, the others were in a gun cabinet which was in a room next to the main bedroom.

“The gun cabinet was badly burnt and partially open. It might have been caused to open by the heat.”

Chief Supt Makedenge said the firearms, magazines and ammunition were taken to experts.

Commenting on the state of Gen Mujuru’s body, Chief Supt Makedenge said it was badly burnt and the stomach was ripped open.

He said a pathologist examined the body which was later taken to One Commando Barracks where some tissue matched his daughter Kumbirai’s.

Chief Supt Makedenge said he travelled to South Africa with forensic experts where tests were done by South African Police.

Earlier, the Mujuru family lawyer Mr Tekhor Kewada asked Harare Fire Brigade station officer Mr Clever Mafoti what usually happens when a fire breaks out in a house.

Mr Mafoti said if a fire breaks out when one is awake, a person would try to escape.

“If that person is awake, they will try to save themselves, however, much of the consequences would depend on the contents of the room,” he said.

“If there were, for example, a form rubber, it would produce toxic gas.”

Mr Mafoti said experience showed that one would fall down at the point which they would think to be the exit.

He said the fire at the farmhouse showed that considerable time elapsed without the inferno being noticed.

Asked if it was normal for a body to produce a blue flame while burning, Mr Mafoti said: “I did not see the blue flame and the intensity. If it is general blue, what usually happens is that if the temperatures are 500 Degrees Celsius, some fluids ooze out of the body, thereafter fat would come out that would create a triangle of combustion which consist of air, combustible materials and the heat.

“A combination of the three items causes an ignition of fire with a blue flame.”

Mr Mafoti said if water is poured on a body which has temperatures above 500 Degrees Celsius, it will boil at 100 degrees and a component of hydrogen in the water which is explosive may cause the fire to intensify.

Asked by Gen Mujuru’s nephew Mr Mudiwa Mundawarara the substances which are not extinguished by water, he said they were petroleum products, fats and metals.

Mr Mafoti said the state of preparedness of the Fire Brigade during the time in question was not ideal.

He was responding to a question from presiding magistrate Mr Walter Chikwanha.

“For example, we would go to Borrowdale with 400 litres of water, but we would reach the place with 100 litres because the truck (fire tender) was not in good condition and it leaked,” he said.

Mr Mafoti said the Fire Brigade was not well equipped.

The 27th witness, Mr Douglas Chiradza Nyakungu, a customer service officer with Zesa said he drank with Gen Mujuru at Beatrice Motel on the eve of his death.

He said the General wanted him to fix a transformer which drew water from Mupfure River which had been vandalised.

He said the transformer was 9km away from the farm.

Mr Nyakungu said Gen Mujuru went home early after telling him that he was supposed to leave his farm at 2am for Beitbridge where he had a scheduled meeting.

“He intended to proceed to Polokwane (South Africa) for another meeting and I asked why he did not use air transport but he said his vehicle was in good condition,” he said.

Mr Nyakungu said Gen Mujuru left for his farm after taking two tots of whiskey.

The following morning, he said he received a phone call from Gen Mujuru’s neighbour Mr Grant Nakhozwe who told him that Gen Mujuru’s house was on fire.

He said when he reached the house, he checked on the transformer and realised that someone had switched it off before getting into the house with Chief Supt Makedenge to check on the electricity equipment.

Mr Nyakungu said he did not know the cause of the fire, but said it was not caused by an electrical fault.

“Wiring was in steel pipes,” he said.

“If there was a fault in the pipes, one would find a hole in the pipe. We saw that all the pipes had not suffered such damage and the electrical set-up in the house had been destroyed by the fire.”

Mr Nyakungu said Zesa’s responsibility stretched up to the customer’s meter box.

But he said he did not see anything suggesting that appliances could have caused the fire, adding that if there was an electrical fault, electricity would have switched off at the source.

He said there were no gadgets which required heavy current that could have caused the fire.

Mujuru evidence destroyed - fireman

Thursday, 26 January 2012 00:00

Scores of people who thronged the Mujuru farm residence soon after the inferno destroyed evidence that could have helped ascertain the cause of the fire.

Court Reporter
Zimbabwe Herald

HARARE Fire Brigade officers failed to ascertain the cause of the fire that killed General Solomon Mujuru because scores of people who visited the farmhouse during and after the accident destroyed the evidence. Fire Brigade station officer, Mr Clever Mafoti, made the revelations at the seventh day of the inquest into the death of Gen Mujuru at the Harare Magistrates’ Courts yesterday.

Mr Mafoti was responding to Mr Clemence Chimbare of the Attorney-General’s Office who sought to know what could have caused the fire.

“When we eventually arrived at the scene, most leads had been destroyed by people present,” he said.

Mr Mafoti said the fire could have started from the bedroom or the main lounge because peeling off of plasters and cracking showed that the fire had been in the two rooms for a long time.

Asked how fire could start from two rooms, Mr Mafoti said it was possible in cases of arson or short circuit.

“In cases involving arson, the person who would have started the fire would have been of unsound mind or when there is a short circuit or when sockets are overloaded,” he said.

Mr Mafoti said fire could be caused by the expansion of dust particles in the ceiling as a result of heat coming from the floor.

He said the ceiling could eventually burst and the fire could spread to other areas.

Mr Mafoti, who was the 26th witness in the inquest, said on the day in question they received a phone call from Harare Central Police Station that fire had broken out at the Mujuru farmhouse at around 3:40am.

“I first made inquiries whether we were going to get water from the scene. It was fortunate that my superior who was known to Gen Mujuru was present. He knew that there was water 1km from the scene in the form of a dam and that there were some water bowsers at the farm,” he said.

He said the cars they had could not go to Beatrice without breaking down so they took a truck they referred to as a horse layer.

Mr Mafoti said he left the station with seven subordinates at 4:09am.

Asked why it took them 30 minutes to depart, Mr Mafoti said, “We did not have the capacity to travel outside Harare hence when we received the report we started making arrangements.”

He said during the time in question, they had a vehicle, which carried 400 litres of water but it was leaking such that they would reach Beatrice without water if they had used it.

Mr Mafoti said they arrived at the farm at around 5:03am and found the water bowser at the scene and they connected a portable pump and began dousing the fire.

“When we reached the scene, there were some pockets of fire here and there but the fire had already been put out,” he said.

Mr Mafoti, who has been working for the Fire Brigade for 27 years, two of them as a station officer, estimated the damage of the fire to be 75 percent.

Yesterday morning, the Mujuru family lawyer Mr Tekor Kewada requested that the inquest be held in the afternoon and the State consented.

In an interview, Mr Kewada said: “There are certain aspects I have been looking at and there is someone researching for me and I made a request to the State to accord postponement.

“When you are calling experts, there are certain aspects that I need to look at. I would also want to consider before I question.”
He said both counsels were there to assist the court in the inquest.

Mr Kewada said if he felt there were insufficient experts, he would apply to call more experts.

The inquest continues today with Mr Mafoti being questioned by the Mujuru family.

An expert from the Police Ballistics Department and a Zesa official are also expected to give evidence.

Mujuru inquest: Policemen testify

Wednesday, 25 January 2012 00:00
Innocent Ruwende Senior Reporter
Zimbabwe Herald

POLICEMEN from Beatrice Police Station yesterday said the fire that burnt General Solomon Mujuru was bluish in colour and different from ordinary flames that were in other parts of the house.

Inspector Simon Dube and Constable Clatwell Garisayi said this at the inquest into the death of Gen Mujuru at the Harare Magistrates’ Courts.

Const Garisayi, who was the 23rd witness, said on the fateful day, Gen Mujuru’s maid Rosemary Short phoned him to report that the farmhouse was on fire.

“The caller identified herself as Rosemary Short and I asked her if they had managed to locate the General and she said they had only seen his vehicle that was parked near the house.

“She said doors were locked and further explained that the General had come to her house to collect some keys,” he said.

Const Garisayi said he sent his subordinate to make a report to the duty officer who arrived with the officer-in-charge minutes later.

The officer-in-charge Inspector Dube, he said, made a call to Tavistock Farm’s owner requesting for a vehicle to ferry them to Gen Mujuru’s Ruzambo Farm.

He told Mrs Sharon Fero of the Attorney-General’s Office that Beatrice Police Station had no vehicle.

‘General Mujuru unhappy with ZRP security’
Mujuru wanted to sleep in car: Maid
Mujuru inquest: Security rapped
Const Garisayi said he went to the farm with Insp Dube when the vehicle arrived.
Upon arrival after 20 to 25 minutes, people were using water to put out the fire.

“At the back of the house, people managed to identify a bluish flame. There was an object, which was burning. I peeped through the window and saw an object with folded hands . . . it was akin to a human body,” he said.

Asked where the bluish fire was emanating from, he said it came from the body and areas surrounding it, adding it was different from flames in other parts of the house.

The bluish fire reportedly covered the body and a portion of about 30cm from the body.

Const Garisayi said they were instructed to douse the fire on the body and it took about 10 buckets to extinguish it.

He said upon pouring the first buckets of water, the flames became ferocious.

Const Garisayi said Deputy Commissioner-General Godwin Matanga arrived at the scene and instructed him to guard a door leading into the house.

When asked about the state of the body, Const Garisayi said, “I would say from the chest going downwards to the stomach, it would appear that the body was burnt such that fire got inside.”

He said his superiors asked him and others to gather debris and they placed it in a plastic bag adding that some objects were hard while others contained ashes.

Const Garisayi said they took the debris to One Commando Barracks.

The 25th witness, Insp Dube, told the court that he has served the ZRP for 27 years and knew Gen Mujuru from the days of the liberation struggle.

He said he also knew him as a prominent farmer in Beatrice and a member of the Crime Consultative Unit in the area.

He said upon arrival at Ruzambo Farm, he saw people around the burning house.

He testified that one of the people who were fighting the fire said he saw a burning object and he went to investigate.

He said he saw a charred body, which was burning from both sides and instructed people to pour water over the body.

He said quite a number of buckets were used to extinguish the fire.

“The fire was bluish and the area covering the chest had flesh, but the bottom area was heavily burnt and on the head only the skull remained,” he said.

Insp Dube said the body lay downwards.

He said he did not know the cause of the fire when he was asked by Gen Mujuru’s nephew Mr James Mushore.

Mr Mushore suggested to him that people who went in to have a look at the body might have destroyed evidence.

Insp Dube denied the suggestion saying people viewed the remains from a distance and Deputy Comm-Gen Matanga would partially lift the blanket covering the remains for people to view.

He said the only people allowed to view the remains were police and members from the Zimbabwe National Army before conceding that some people might have also viewed Gen Mujuru’s remains. The 21st witness, Mr Jimmy Maponga, who is the district information officer for Seke, did not give evidence in court.

His testimony was admitted into the record by consent of the State and the lawyer representing the Mujuru family, Mr Tekor Kewada.

It was admitted through Section 3 (1) (4) of the Criminal Law (Codification and Reform) Act because it was similar to that of other witnesses — Tongai Chimuka and Blessing Madzivire.

The 22nd witness, Mr Grant Nakhozwe, the owner of Moonlight Funeral Services and a neighbouring farmer, said on the fateful day he was sleeping when he received a phone call from a Maponga who is employed at Beatrice Hospital at around 4am.

He said he was advised that Gen Mujuru had been burnt in a fire at his farmhouse.

“I called my manager and told him to wait by his gate so we could go together to the General’s farm. When I arrived at the farm, I asked the guards what happened and where they were when the incident occurred. The guards told me they only heard noise akin to gunshots,” he said.

He said upon arrival, he met Vice President Joice Mujuru and she told him that the General had died in the inferno.

Mr Nakhozwe returned to his farm to collect a solar light, which he gave to a policeman.

He said when the policeman went into the house, he told him that he had found a body and he and the VP peeped through the window, but they could not tell whether it was a human body or not.

Mr Nakhozwe said Gen Mujuru’s body was still burning and Insp Simon Dube told people to pour water over it.

He said he was interested in knowing the cause of the fire so he called a Zesa official, Mr Nyakungu who came 30 minutes later and inspected the house.

Responding to a question from Gen Mujuru’s elder brother, Joel, Mr Nakhozwe said two security guards at the farm had told him that they heard gunshots.

The 24th witness, Asst Insp Jokoniya Zaza stationed at Beatrice Police Station and attached to police general security intelligence, said on the fateful day, he was instructed by his officer-in-charge to call the fire brigade and Beatrice Hospital for an ambulance after they heard the news.

“I called the fire brigade, but failed to get through, so I called Harare Central for them to get in touch with them,” he said.

He said he followed to Ruzambo Farm when the ambulance from Beatrice Hospital came to the police station.

He said when he arrived at the scene, Insp Dube told him that Gen Mujuru’s remains had been found and most parts of the house had been consumed by the fire.

He said when he accompanied VP Mujuru into the house, he could tell that it was lying facing downwards.

Today, a member of the ZRP Ballistic Department, the Fire Brigade and Zesa will give evidence.

After yesterday’s session, VP Mujuru said an inquest was the best way of dealing with the matter as things were becoming “clearer and clearer”.

Mujuru wanted to sleep in car: Maid

Thursday, 19 January 2012 00:00

Rosemary Short wept after testifying at the Harare Magistrate court yesterday

Lovemore Chikova and Innocent Ruwende
Zimbabwe Herald

A STAR witness in the ongoing inquest into the death of General Solomon Mujuru yesterday told the court that the General sometimes slept in his car and had contemplated doing so the day he died in an inferno that gutted his house.

Gen Mujuru’s maid, Ms Rosemary Short, said when the General left the farm on August 11, he said was going to Harare.

He returned on August 15, and died that night in the inferno.

She had knocked off early that day because she was unwell, but a child told her around 8pm that there was a vehicle outside her house, which was in the workers’ compound about 3km from the farmhouse.

“I saw the vehicle and it belonged to Gen Mujuru. He told me he had forgotten his keys in Harare and asked for the ones I used,” she said.

“I went back into the house and brought out my keys, which I handed over to him.”

Gen Mujuru told Ms Short that he had been thinking of sleeping in the car that night and even showed her how he could do that by opening the door and moving the seat up and down.

Ms Short said Gen Mujuru sometimes slept in the car, especially when he came to the farm drunk.

But the General, Ms Short said, was not drunk that night, as he was in control of his faculties.
After Gen Mujuru bade her farewell, Ms Short retired to bed, but around 2:45am - her brother Mr Petros Jaison - who works as a general hand at the farm, phoned her to say the main house was on fire.

Ms Short was among the General’s workers who testified at the inquest yesterday.

She said it had been impossible to enter the blazing house to rescue the General because the fire that engulfed the house was so intense.

She broke down as she recounted telling Vice President Joice Mujuru over the phone about the fire, triggering further weeping from Gen Mujuru’s elder brother, Joel, and sister Mrs Elizabeth Marowa.

Mr Joel Mujuru briefly left the court to compose himself.

Mr Clemence Chimbari of the Attorney General’s Office, who was leading Ms Short in her evidence, suggested that the hearing presided over by provincial magistrate Mr Walter Chikwanha at Harare Magistrates Courts adjourns to give Ms Short a break, but she insisted that she was fit to continue giving evidence.

A policeman, Const Obert Mark, who has already given evidence, arrived at her house with the same message.

She asked him why the police did not break the window or door to the bedroom to rescue Gen Mujuru.

Const Mark told her that they did not know which one was Gen Mujuru’s bedroom.

His own evidence told of a similar dilemma.
She asked Const Mark if the police had called for help, but he said he did not have airtime.

Ms Short said Const Mark told her that the fire came from a geyser, but he could not tell which one exactly.

She then phoned VP Mujuru and told her of the inferno.

VP Mujuru told her to rush over to the house and see what was happening.

“When I arrived at the farmhouse, I realised that the house had been utterly destroyed and the policemen told me that they could not locate the General,” said Ms Short.

She said there were two windows in Gen Mujuru’s bedroom, totalling about three metres.

Ms Short said there was a small candle in the bedroom, but she did not put any matches out because she did not think that Gen Mujuru would visit the farm that day.

She said Gen Mujuru sometimes used a candle when there was no electricity at the farmhouse, although there was a generator; the general usually asked for the generator to be switched on when he wanted to watch television.

There were three doors used to access Gen Mujuru’s bedroom, she said.

Ms Short said the bedroom held a bed, headboard, dressing table, a television set, three sofas, a chest of drawers, two fitted wardrobes, a desk table, a chair, a safe and a coffee table.

After the fire had been fought with the help of Harare Fire Brigade, which arrived at around 5am, Ms Short said the Officer-in-Charge at Beatrice who had arrived earlier told them that he had located Gen Mujuru’s remains in the house.

“I started crying,” said Ms Short.

“We were looking at the remains through the window, but I did not see them properly because it was dark. I only saw a burnt object.”

Ms Short said there were chemicals to treat cattle, a safe, a gun cabinet, shoes, electricity transformer boxes and water glasses in the room where the remains were found.

She said Gen Mujuru’s vehicle was parked near the swimming pool where he did not usually park it.

Mr Albert Alufandika, who worked at the farm as a groundsman, said he was woken up by a police officer at around 2:26am and told that there was fire at the main house.

When he arrived at the house, they pushed Gen Mujuru’s car, whose windows were not locked, about 5 metres.

Alufandika said a cellphone which was in the car rung and he answered to find that it was VP Mujuru who asked him if they had found the General.

Mr Jaison broke a window to the sitting room and those there started moving out property, salvaging sofas in the process.

Mr Alufandika said he looked for Gen Mujuru around the garden, but could not find him, only to return after he heard that his remains had been discovered in the house.

“We heard that there was a body next to the window, but I was gripped with fear and could not take a look,” he said.

Quizzed by VP Mujuru on why the car was parked in an unusual place, Mr Alufandika said it was also surprising to him that the vehicle was parked at the back of the house.

He said Gen Mujuru had parked his car at the back only twice before.

“It is said that he collected keys for the house from the maid, this means that he did not have keys to the bedroom door,” said VP Mujuru.

“I think the obvious thing is that he should have parked the car on the usual place near the kitchen door because that is the door for which he colleted keys from the maid.”

Mr Jaison told the court that he was told by a police officer at around 2:30am that the main house was on fire.

When they arrived at the house, Mr Jaison said he broke the window to the sitting room and used a torch to look for Gen Mujuru.

The fire was intense in other rooms and after failing to locate him in the sitting room, he started throwing out sofas.

He then rushed out and brought a water bowser and the people who had gathered started dousing the flame using buckets.

He said the Officer-in-Charge at Beatrice arrived later and called the fire brigade.

“Gen Mujuru’s body was found in a room next to the door leading to the verandah,” said Mr Jaison. “I was told to bring some water so that it could be poured on the body to stop it from burning further.”

Under questioning from the Mujuru family lawyer, Mr Takor Keweda, Mr Jaison said he knew where Gen Mujuru’s bedroom was, but did not make any effort to break the door and the windows because the fire was intense that side of the house.

“I tried all I could to save Gen Mujuru, but I could not because of the fire,” he said.

One of the three police officers assigned to guard Gen Mujuru’s house, Constable Lazarus Handikatari, said he was not on duty when the fire broke out.

He said they had a duty roaster and it was Constable Augustinos Chinyoka’s turn to guard the house.

Const Handikatari said when he heard that fire had broken out, he teamed up with the other police officers to look for Gen Mujuru around the house.

“Const Chinyoka smashed one of the windows, but we did could not go far inside the house because we were choked by smoke,” he said.

“I asked for reinforcements from workers in the compound, but we could do nothing because the fire was intense.”

Const Handikatari said VP Mujuru arrived at the house around 4am and one of the workers was able to go into the house because the fire had subsidised and discovered the body of Gen Mujuru.

He said there had been some explosions from the asbestos sheets on the house because of the fire.

Const Handikatari said there was no electricity at the farm around 8pm when he went to rest and the room where he was resting was not part of the guardroom.

Mr Chikwanha adjourned the proceedings to today, with Ms Short expected to continue giving her evidence.

Senegal Court Says President Wade Can Run Again

January 27, 2012

Senegal Court Says President Can Run Again

By ADAM NOSSITER
New York Times

DAKAR, Senegal — Senegal’s elderly president can run for a third term next month, according to a ruling Friday night by the nation’s constitutional court, which also threw out the candidacy of the popular music star Youssou N’Dour.

The decision, which appears to contradict a two-term limit in Senegal’s Constitution, could provoke a renewal of last summer’s street clashes between young opponents of the president, Abdoulaye Wade, and Senegal’s police. Already Friday night there were reports that the police were using tear gas and batons to disperse youthful protesters in the normally peaceful capital.

Mr. Wade, officially 85 but believed to be older, has become the focus of youthful discontent in a coastal nation of high unemployment and widespread poverty; in his 11 years in power, Senegal’s place on the United Nations Human Development Index — a measure of living standards, life expectancy, literacy and education — has hardly budged.

Yet Senegal had also maintained its reputation for vigilantly sticking to democratic rules, particularly compared with its turbulent West African neighbors, with a peaceful handoff of power in 2000, when Mr. Wade was first elected, and elections generally judged fair.

His critics say Mr. Wade has damaged that reputation with his determination to stay in power despite the constitutional limit. On Friday night, the court — whose head was appointed by Mr. Wade — gave a major boost to the president’s hopes for the election, to be held Feb. 26. He faces three of his own former prime ministers, among other candidates.

At the same time, the constitutional court apparently pushed aside one of Mr. Wade’s leading critics, Mr. N’Dour, a top-selling singer popular worldwide. Mr. N’Dour has been outspoken for several years in denouncing what he and others say are the president’s authoritarian tendencies. He has written songs decrying the failings of Mr. Wade’s rule, including frequent power failures, and has built a small media empire in Senegal that serves as a voice for opposition to the president.

It was not immediately clear why the court did not include the singer on its list of approved candidates — a decision confirmed on Mr. N’Dour’s own television station Friday night. But the move seemed likely to further inflame youths in Dakar’s volatile suburbs, whose opposition to Mr. Wade has coalesced into a civil society movement that earlier Friday filled a central city square here with protesters.

Late Friday night, Senegalese television showed the square, the Place de l’Obélisque, still packed with angry opponents of the president.

Mr. Wade, an accomplished lawyer who spent decades as an opposition leader himself, has a reputation for self-assurance. Earlier this week he airily dismissed his critics, as he often does, in an interview published on the Web site Dakaractu.com: “The constitution, it’s me that wrote it. All by myself. Nobody knows it better than me.”

A Political Obituary of Etta James

A Political Obituary of Etta James

Archives/Stringer by Kenyon Farrow
Tuesday, January 24 2012, 9:09 AM EST

It’s a damn shame that many people were introduced to Etta James in the years before her death last week through Beyonce’s portrayal of her in the 2008 biopic “Cadillac Records.”

No one understood the awkwardness of that casting choice better than James herself, who told The New York Post’s Page Six in 2007, when she learned the film was already in production, that “she is going to have a hill to climb, because Etta James ain’t been no angel!… I wasn’t as bourgie as she is, she’s bourgeois. She knows how to be a lady, she’s like a model. I wasn’t like that … I smoked in the bathroom in school, I was kinda arrogant.”

The woman born Jamesetta Hawkins on January 25, 1938, was far more than just a torch song singer, and was not at all the tragic mulatto with a white daddy complex that “Cadillac Records” constructed. In many ways, James’s personal and artistic journey, as opposed to the film’s caricature, has a lot to teach us about the shifting politics of race, class and feminist politics over the course of the last half century.

Etta James was born in Los Angeles, when many African Americans were moving due West to escape the brutality of the Jim Crow South and chase the promise of manufacturing jobs. She was raised by a handful of caregivers, as her mother was often running the streets chasing a good time.

Her mother was a woman James sometimes despised and at the same time desperately wanted to please. Her father’s identity was not really known to her, though it has been rumored her father was white. In fact, James learned late in life during an argument with her mother that he was likely legendary pool shark Rudolf “Minnesota Fats” Wanderone, whom James met in 1987.

At age five, James developed two relationships that would remain with her throughout her life: one relationship with singing and one with black gay men, and the LGBT community as a whole. In her 2003 autobiography Rage To Survive, James describes her first vocal coach, James Earl Hines—musical director at L.A.’s St. Paul Baptist Church and one of the the early gospel superstars—as “married, acted gay as a goose, and I was crazy about him…. Truth is, all the gay guys in the choir sang like angels, and acted so different…. I loved their little underground talk, their gossiping about the sisters.”

Though James’ formative years were spent singing in the church, she turned to the streets, and street life, for inspiration. She moved to San Francisco’s Fillmore district as an early teen, where she sang in the doo-wop group the Creolettes (which later become The Peaches) and recorded on Modern Records, before leaving in 1960 to sign with the legendary Chess Records (which the film “Cadillac Records” attempts to profile). Her debut album “At Last!” was released the same year, when she was 22 years old.

Unlike most artists who work for many years before writing or recording their “definitive” work, James is most remembered for songs from this debut album, including “At Last” (though it was not a crossover single) and “I Just Want to Make Love to You” and “A Sunday Kind of Love.”

At Last has become arguably the most popular song in the U.S. for weddings, Valentine’s Day, or other kinds of bourgeois events calling for cheap sentimentality—despite the fact that James’s powerhouse vocals and phrasing actively work against the sentimentality of the song’s arrangement, as it does in most of her work covering jazz standards during that period.

But her vocals weren’t the only place James was working decidedly against a safe “jazz singer” image. She worked in her personal life and her styling to embody the kind of black urban street culture in which she was immersing herself:

“I [was] serious about turning little churchgoing Jamesetta into a tough bitch called Etta James…. I wanted to look like a great big high-yellow ho’. I wanted to be nasty.”

James ascribes the blonde-yellow hair and black eyebrows that she adopted early in her career to being closely associated with street-based sex workers and drag queens at the time. That’s who she was emulating.

She also says the beginning of her addiction to heroin was not a way to cope with the abandonment issues or physical abuse she suffered as a child. She starting shooting drugs because she thought that’s what bad girls do, and because she saw Billie Holiday, her idol, as the ultimate bad girl.

She lost many friends to issues related to substance addiction (Billie Holiday, Destiny—a black drag queen and best friend to James, even Janis Joplin, who emulated James and for whom’s overdose James felt personally responsible). She was able to kick heroin in the 1970s, but she struggled with addiction much of her adult life, and she was pretty open about that fact.

While James was touring the country, getting high and running the streets with gangsters, street walkers, gays, and drag queens (and likely some folks we’d now call transgender), she also became friends with Muhammad Ali (they met when he was still Cassius Clay) and Malcolm X, both of whom she says she spent a lot of time with. At one point she joined the Nation of Islam, and gained her “X.”

But James in many ways was exactly the kind of convert the Nation of Islam sought—black people from urban areas involved in various forms of street culture. “My religious practices might have been erratic, and my wildness surely overwhelmed my piety, but for ten years I called myself a Muslim,” said James.

As the 1960s moved on, James’ music also began to shift from doo-wop and jazz to more R&B, blues, rock, and even country over the course of the 1960s and 70s. Though James began doing the kind of gospel-influenced R&B (which later got described as “soul” music), in the early 1960s, it was Aretha Franklin who got credit for ushering in the soul era, along with James Brown (whom James toured with, and sometimes sang for in the 1960s).

James really capitalized on the blues resurgence of the 1970s to make a living touring the world. She got frustrated by the fact that people constructed a blues identity for her work and deeply resented the “Earth Mama” trap she felt that put her in.

(It’s a trap many other black women artists find difficult to escape as well.) In the end, though, she went with it, as she saw it as the easiest way to make money to support herself and her two young sons.

By the end of the 1970s when Chess Records folded, James was on hard times, still struggling with an addiction, and trying to make a living in the disco era, without a record label and doing her own bookings.

James said that without the gay community, she would have starved in the late 1970s early 1980s, when she performed in a lot of gay bars across the country. Her 1994 release “Life From San Francisco” was actually recorded in March 1981 in a gay bar.

In her memoir, Etta recounts a harrowing premonition at the time about the onset of the AIDS epidemic.

James eventually began to record again. With her two adult sons serving as bandmates and co-producers, she recorded and toured from the 1990s up through 2011, mostly recording in the jazz and blues genres.

Is it any wonder that a woman who struggled to define her self, her sound and her career over the span of 50 years would be a little suspicious of a Hollywood portrayal of her, in a film on which she was not consulted?

James was not happy about her portrayal in “Cadillac Records,” for which Beyonce served not only as actress but also as producer. Contrary to the portrayal of James in the film, she was not romantically involved with Chess Records founder Leonard Chess.

Nor did she use drugs because she was distraught over not knowing the identity of her biological father—James knew this was a possibility, but clearly saw herself as black and never tried to identify as mixed or biracial.

The film tries to suggest James was sexually attracted to Chess because he represented the white daddy she never had. Marshall Chess, the surviving son of Leonard Chess, said of the Chess/James relationship, “Now, my father was no angel, but (he) was never caught in an affair. It never happened.”

Marshall reported that he asked James about it, and she said, “He kissed me on the cheek once.”

To add insult to injury, after the film, Beyonce performed Etta’s signature song, “At Last” at the President Obama’s inauguration in 2009, laying claim to the tune James was still singing professionally and which she relied on to make a living. James told an audience shortly after that that Obama “is not my president” and “that woman he had singing for him, singing my song … she’s going to get her ass whipped.”

James (or likely her publicist) later released a statement saying James was “kidding” about the comment. But the conflict between James and Beyonce is not as simple as divas behaving badly. It really represents an artist angered by the attempts made without her consent to control the public’s understanding of her life and legacy. Audiences will hopefully be willing to go beyond “At Last,” and beyond “Cadillac Records” to find a woman whose talent and legacy went beyond both.

Kenyon Farrow is a regular contributor to Colorlines.com.

Read this online at http://colorlines.com/archives/2012/01/etta_james_political_obituary.html

434 People Killed in Iraq Since U.S. Pulled Out

January 27, 2012

434 People Killed in Iraq Since U.S. Pulled Out

By MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT
New York Times

BAGHDAD — Since the United States military withdrew from Iraq in the middle of last month, 434 Iraqis have been killed in attacks across the country, according to security officials, one of the highest tolls for that amount of time in the past few years. The latest attack occurred Friday when a suicide bomber detonated a car filled with explosives near a funeral procession in a Shiite neighborhood. The procession was for a man who had been fatally shot, along with his wife and son, a day earlier by insurgents.

According to security officials, 31 people, including 8 police officers, were killed in the Friday attack and 60 were wounded. Elsewhere in Baghdad, a young boy was killed in an explosion near a soccer field.

It is difficult to make sweeping statements about security trends, and accounts about attacks and death tolls differ. Nevertheless, the wave of violence over the past five weeks has unnerved Iraqis who fear that their leaders, embroiled in a political fight with one another, are not prepared to thwart attacks without help from the Americans.

According to statistics compiled by the Ministry of Interior, the rate of deaths over the past month has been higher than all but one month last year. The average daily death toll since the withdrawal has been about 11. Last year, the average daily death toll was nine.

The attacks, which have been aimed mainly at Shiites, have also raised questions about whether the insurgent group Al Qaeda in Iraq has regained its footing after it was significantly diminished in 2008. In recent statements on its Web site, the group said it had shifted its attention toward those with close ties to Iran, particularly Iraq’s Shiites, in an effort to push back against Iran’s influence in Iraq in the wake of the American withdrawal.

Despite the carnage, top Iraqi security officials say their fight against insurgents is increasingly successful.

The acting minister of interior, Adnan al-Asadi, said in an interview here on Thursday that when the Americans were in Iraq they made the fight against Al Qaeda more difficult.

“It became better after the Americans left,” he said. “They were slowing our operations. Sometimes we would arrest a bad guy, and they would get involved and say, ‘That is our guy,’ and they would have him set free.”

The United States provided extensive support to Iraqi security forces in counterterrorism operations against Al Qaeda, including helicopter transportation for many of the raids to detain insurgents. Mr. Asadi said that even though the Iraqis no longer have that help, “Al Qaeda has received a number of hits, and we were able to arrest a large number of their leaders.”

“We are hitting them hard,” he added. “And we are arresting big numbers of them every day, sometimes as much as 50 a day.”

The recent wave of attacks, Mr. Asadi said, was “just to prove that they are still here.”

The attack on Friday occurred around 11 a.m., as the procession made its way past a market, taking the man’s body to be cleaned before being buried.

“The people in the market got hurt, there were women and children burning,” said a man who was part of the procession and who would identify himself only as Abu Hussein. “There were a lot of officers in the funeral procession.”

Abbas Munther, 32, was selling cigarettes on the street when “the explosion went off and I flew right into the air,” he said.

“I was blinded by the heavy smoke. I couldn’t see who was beside me,” said Mr. Munther, who sustained arm and head wounds. “Then I could hear the voices of injured people and the sirens of rescue vehicles. Later I saw the ground and it was full of body parts and blood.”

On Thursday, 20 people were killed across Iraq, including a high-ranking member of the Awakening movement, which is made up of former Qaeda members who turned against the insurgents and helped the Americans and Iraqis fight them.

Zaid Thaker and Omar al-Jawoshy contributed reporting.

Zimpapers Bids Veteran Journalist Zulu Farewell

Zimpapers bids veteran journalist Zulu farewell

Saturday, 28 January 2012 00:00
Herald Reporter

ZIMPAPERS yesterday bade farewell to Herald managing editor, Isaac Zulu, who retired after serving the company for 29 years.

Speaking during the farewell ceremony at Herald House yesterday, group chief operating officer, Pikirayi Deketeke, described Zulu as an “asset” to the organisation.

He said he learnt a lot in the 24 years he had worked with Zulu.

“I came here when he was already in the field.

“He is a veteran journalist, especially in the designing area. For the years we have been together, I learnt a lot,” he said.

“In terms of contribution, he is an institution with vast knowledge.

“He was and I hope he will always be there to guide the young journalists in realising their dreams.”

Herald editor William Chikoto said Zulu had a distinguished career in journalism and was an expert in media management.

He said Zulu had personal and corporate discipline.

“He is a man with vast experience in terms of management.

“We have learnt a lot from him as he is a man who believed in management-by-keeping-a-step-ahead,” he said.

In his remarks, Zulu urged young journalists to stay focused to achieve their dreams.

“Always remember that the time to retire will come for you. Make hay while the sun shines and be disciplined to reach greater heights,” he said.

Zulu started his journalism career in 1969.
He joined Zimpapers as a senior sub editor in 1982 before he rose through the ranks to become managing editor.

He left briefly to work for the Daily News before rejoining The Herald.

Identify Yourself for Dialogue, Nigerian President Jonathan Tells BokoHaram

Identify yourselves for dialogue, Jonathan tells Boko Haram

SAM OLUWALANA WITH AGENCY REPORTS 27/01/2012 01:31:00
Nigeria National Mirror

President Goodluck Jonathan President Goodluck Jonathan yesterday challenged the Boko Haram Islamic sect to identify themselves and state clearly their demands as a basis for talks, even as he acknowledged that military confrontation alone will not end their insurgency. Jonathan, in an interview with a foreign news agency at the Presidential Villa, Abuja said there was no doubt that Boko Haram had links with other jihadist groups outside Nigeria.

The sect killed more than 500 people last year and more than 250 in the first weeks of 2012 in gun and bomb attacks, according to Human Rights Watch. Coordinated attacks in Kano last Friday left 186 people dead in its most deadly strike to date, prompting the president to visit surviving victims.

If they clearly identify themselves now and say this is the reason why we are resisting, this is the reason why we are confronting government or this is the reason why we destroy some innocent people and their properties, then there will be a basis for dialogue. We will dialogue, let us know your problems and we will solve your problem but if they dont identify themselves, who will you dialogue with, said Jonathan.

The President pledged to bring development to the remote, semi-arid corners of the country where high youth unemployment has provided easy recruits for extremists.

Military confrontation alone will not eliminate terror attacks, an enabling environment for young people to find jobs is also needed .Our commitment is to make sure our irrigation programs are all revitalised so most of these young people are engaged in productive agriculture and will not be free for them to recruit as political thugs, he said.

As well as coming under fire for his handling of the crisis in the north, President Jonathan suffered a week of vitriolic anti-government protests this month when attempt was made to scrap fuel subsidies, part of efforts to cut the fiscal costs, but was forced to partly reinstate it.

This prompted the Ministry of Petroleum Resources to announce a raft of measures aimed at defusing public anger about the extent of corruption and mismanagement in the sector, including setting up a new committee to hurry along the stalled Petroleum Industry Bill, PIB.