Author: jhnashtongmailcom

Source: Why don’t Afro-Brazilians revolt like African Americans? A tale of passivity

On May 9, Brazil’s death toll from the coronavirus topped 10,000. Instead of marking the grim milestone with an address or a sign of respect for the victims, President Jair Bolsonaro took a spin on a jet ski. Video footage widely circulated on social media shows Brazil’s far-right leader grinning as he pulls up to a boat on Brasília’s Paranoá Lake where supporters are having a cookout. As he grips onto their boat, Bolsonaro jokes about the “neurosis” of Brazilians worried about the virus. “There’s nothing to be done [about it],” he shrugs. “It’s madness.”

 

Source: Brazil Is Starting to Lose the Fight Against Coronavirus | Time

During World War II, a group of African American sailors were chosen to integrate the Naval Officer Corps, forever changing what was possible in the U.S. Navy.

Source: The Forgotten Story of How 13 Black Men Broke the Navy’s Toughest Color Barrier – POLITICO

The federal government’s response to COVID-19 has been a mess from the top to the bottom, including the “you’re on your own” approach it’s taken towards black people, who have been disproportionately affected by the pandemic.

Case in point: the $650 billion Paycheck Protection Program which was supposed to help small businesses survive and pay employees during the current economic downturn has neglected hundreds of black and other minority-owned businesses while funneling millions in taxpayer money to corporations like the Los Angeles Lakers.

That kind of inequity in the distribution of resources has driven former NBA All-Star Magic Johnson to commit $100 million in loans to those left behind by the government’s program, according to the Wall Street Journal

 

Source: Magic Johnson Is Helping Minority Businesses Hit By COVID-19

Source: Enough is enough, let no one from Foreign countries control Africa again – Rwanda President Kagame – Reporters Press NG

 

Source: Madagascar cure: We have been offered $20m to poison COVID Organic – President Rajoelina (Video) – Daily Post Nigeria

They are known as the Batwa or the Great Lakes Twa, a pygmy people who are believed to be, not only the oldest surviving population of the Great Lakes region of central Africa, but the first people to inhabit Africa and the world in general, alongside the Kalahari San people.

Source: These mountain-dwelling people of the African Great Lakes region are believed to be the world’s first humans – Face2Face Africa

In the early 15th century, Portuguese explorers like Henry the Navigator began sailing to Africa, bringing back both goods and enslaved people. A new archaeological study of more than 150 skeletons dumped in Lagos, Portugal, reveals that many of the enslaved Africans were not given proper burials and that several of them may even have been tied up at death.

Source: Archaeologists Find Bound Bodies Of Enslaved Africans In Portuguese Trash Dump

It’s hard to believe, but your body holds about 60,000 miles of blood vessels. Along with your heart and other muscles, they make up your circulatory system. This network of roadways carries blood to every corner of your body. But when your circulation is poor, it slows or blocks the blood flow. That means the cells in your body can’t get all the oxygen and nutrients they need.

Source: 12 Tips to Improve Your Circulation

It is no surprise that the whip is synonymous with New World slavery: its continual crack remained an audible threat to enslaved workers to keep at their work, reminding them that their lives and bodies were not their own, and that they should maintain (outwardly at least) a demeanour of dutiful subordination to their overlords. The whip was a cruel and effective instrument of torture – part of the brutal technology that kept the productive machine of plantation America at work. Nowhere was this more obvious than on the islands of the Caribbean. By the middle of the 18th century, these were the most valuable parts of the British empire, and the large island of Jamaica, with its huge sugar plantations and brutal slave regime, was the jewel in the imperial crown.

Source: How Slaveholders in the Caribbean Maintained Control