Friday, December 23, 2011

Low Country Boil from the West Coast Gullah

West Coast Gullah's Low Country Boil full of fresh prawns, oysters, clams, black bass,


sweet potates, carrots, okra, and cabbage.



In early November, I went to St. Helena Island, and the city of Beaufort in South Carolina, to connect with my roots on my Dad's side. Yep! We Geechee, or Gullah, whichever you prefer. I journeyed to the 29th Annual Gullah Heritage Festival, held at the Penn Center, which is the site of one of the country's first schools for freed Africn slaves. The link is below to learn more about this fascinating place.

Seafood, which was always a big part of our diet in my Los Angeles home, is a staple of the African people that cultivated rice and indigo in the Sea Islands off the coast of the Carolinas and Georgia. So the dish I had at the Gullah Heritage Festival was basically shrimp, potatoes, spicy sausage, and corn. I also discovered that oysters are also a huge part of the Gullah diet. Our family had fried fish almost every Friday for dinner. Fried oysters were always accompanied by sand dabs, catfish, and Louisiana Buffalo, but we'd always save a few of the oysters to eat raw.





As I grew older and developed into a full fledged lover of raw oysters and clams, I attributed this craving to my Dad, who'd grown up in Newark, New Jersey. I just thought it was the influence of the Italian culture that'd planted this love of raw oysters and clams in him, which he'd passed on to me. Well this recent visit revealed that his love of oysters came from his own heritage, for harvesting and eating oysters is definitely a part of Gullah culture.





Now because the other side of me, my Mother's people, are also exquisite cooks, who get alot of their seasonings and spices from our Native American heritage, as I'm whirling about in the kitchen I also have to surrender to their urgings. My grandmother's mother was 1/2 Indian, and her husband, my grandfather's father was a full blood Comanche.

So I add sage, bay leaf and thyme to my Low Country Boil. Can't forget the gumbo file, which is sassafras, an herb my sister used to love as a tea when she was a child. I bring my own love of veggies to it, by adding carrots, almost a full head of cabbage, and to deepen the African soul of the dish, I add okra. And ofcourse, all this is built upon a bulb of sauted garlic following the holy trinity (onions, bell peppers and celery) which gets the fragrances and flavors going.

As far as seafood, besides fresh shrimp, I add oysters and clams. Last batch I even added crab. To honor my Uncle Wendell, who taught me how to fish, ring a chicken's neck and love the outdoors, I place a nice piece of black bass on top almost at the end so that it doesn't fall apart. Bass was one of his favorite fish, and my middle name is derived from his name.

The dish is lighter than gumbo because it is not started with roux. A roux, made from flour and water is a thickener, and I like that my Gullah ancestors liked to 'keep it light', because the dish is really very low in calories and as I make it, totally healthy.




I use all organic veggies, and the freshest fish from Chinese fish markets. I find Chinese markets always a better source for fish than Whole Foods, or any other markets. Daily fresh catches, often wild caught, and all for dollars less per pound than traditional supermarkets. A slightly hot smoked sausage made of beef and chicken (my favorite choice is James' BBQ sausage) just contrasts the fish with a kick that's satisfying in itself.


A couple of last notes....I use Rooibus, the African red tea that is higher in anti-oxidants than green tea as my liquid base. To prepare it I boil at least 2 tsps in a quart pan and start my Boil with that. Later I add more water to the Boil making sure everything is covered. The Boil is actually a seafood, sausage and vegetable soup, so enough water is critical, as the broth is just as delectable as the ingredients.




And yes, sea salt....never that iodized salt. I remember that at the Penn Center, this dish was HOT! So I make sure mine is also by using what the Jamaican Ital chefs call a Scotch Bonnet pepper. And I also added about 1/8 of a tsp of cayenne pepper (30,000 scoville units).


Lawd Have Mercy....Deeelicious~


Kentke



I just ruined all that good eating by snacking out on Trader Joe's Cocoa Drizzled Kettle Corn!!! OMG that stuff is good! And they even had the nerve to price it cheap~ only $1.99.


Now if you really want a taste organism, add sweet raisins and dry roasted salted p-nuts. Dr. Carver would approve. It makes a great party mix, or movie/video snack.



Bon Appetite Darlings~



Saturday, December 17, 2011

WAKE UP PEOPLE - American Workers Could Lose the Right to Organize Jan 1, 2012


It is said that soon after his enlightenment the Buddha passed a man on the road who was struck by the Buddha's extraordinary radiance and peaceful presence. The man stopped and asked,

"My friend, what are you?Are you a celestial being or a god?"
"No", said the Buddha.
"Well, then, are you some kind of magician or wizard?"
again the Buddha answered.
"No."
"Are you a man?"
"No."
"Well, my friend, then what are you?"
The Buddha replied,

"I am awake."

Sorry friends for the introduction, but when I read the article below describing the crucial moment which American workers face, and decided I wanted to share it with you, this story I learned almost 40 years ago came to mind.

Just think, wouldn't it be nice if American companies no longer had to send their businesses and factories overseas to get the cheapest labor possible? Yea, I mean, if they could only pay the same wages as they do overseas, and loose all the restrictions and benefits they have to shell out...corporate America and multinationals could keep their business right here in America and use American workers!

When are the people here in America going to wake up? Where's the Occupy Movement when you need it?!? Efforts to diminish the importance of the Occupy Movement always bring up the fact that the Movement doesn't focus on a particular issue. Well here's one ready for them to confront that could also bring more American workers into action.

By the way, the most beautiful sights in Oakland at Frank Ogawa City Hall Plaza, on the day of the Nov. 2nd Occupy Oakland General Strike were the groups feeding the people. This was led by the SEIU Local 1021 workers providing free food (hamburgers and hotdogs), and distributing water to the thousands gathered to march that day. Their particpation, leadership and acts of generosity were stunning and inspiring demonstrations of true solidarity.

Next to their tables, lines formed to receive free plates of delicious chicken and rice and Afghani naan from Kamdesh, a downtown Middle Eastern restaurant.

This is how we must move forward. With everyone contributing from their gifts, freely sharing our abilities and talent, we become an unbeatable force.

A luta Continua~
The Struggle Continues
Kentke



Crippling the Right to Organize


By WILLIAM B. GOULD IV
Stanford, Calif.


UNLESS something changes in Washington, American workers will, on New Year’s Day, effectively lose their right to be represented by a union. Two of the five seats on the National Labor Relations Board, which protects collective bargaining, are vacant, and on Dec. 31, the term of Craig Becker, a labor lawyer whom President Obama named to the board last year through a recess appointment, will expire. Without a quorum, the Supreme Court ruled last year, the board cannot decide cases.

What would this mean?
Workers illegally fired for union organizing won’t be reinstated with back pay. Employers will be able to get away with interfering with union elections. Perhaps most important, employers won’t have to recognize unions despite a majority vote by workers. Without the board to enforce labor law, most companies will not voluntarily deal with unions.

If this nightmare comes to pass, it will represent the culmination of three decades of Republican resistance to the board — an unwillingness to recognize the fundamental right of workers to band together, if they wish, to seek better pay and working conditions. But Mr. Obama is also partly to blame; in trying to install partisan stalwarts on the board, as his predecessors did, he is all but guaranteeing that the impasse will continue. On Wednesday, he announced his intention to nominate two pro-union lawyers to the board, though there is no realistic chance that either can gain Senate confirmation anytime soon.

For decades after its creation in 1935, the board was a relatively fair arbiter between labor and capital. It has protected workers’ right to organize by, among other things, overseeing elections that decide on union representation. Employers may not engage in unfair labor practices, like intimidating organizers and discriminating against union members. Unions are prohibited, too, from doing things like improperly pressuring workers to join.

The system began to run into trouble in the 1970s. Employers found loopholes that enabled them to delay the board’s administrative proceedings, sometimes for years. Reforms intended to speed up the board’s resolution of disputes have repeatedly foundered in Congress.

The precipitous decline of organized labor — principally a result of economic forces, not legal ones — cemented unions’ dependence on the board, despite its imperfections. Meanwhile, business interests, represented by an increasingly conservative Republican Party, became more assertive in fighting unions.

The board became dysfunctional. Traditionally, members were career civil servants or distinguished lawyers and academics from across the country. But starting in the Reagan era, the board’s composition began to tilt toward Washington insiders like former Congressional staff members and former lobbyists.

Starting with a compromise that allowed my confirmation in 1994, the board’s members and general counsel have been nominated in groups. In contrast to the old system, the new “batching” meant that nominees were named as a package acceptable to both parties. As a result, the board came to be filled with rigid ideologues. Some didn’t even have a background in labor law.

Under President George W. Bush, the board all but stopped using its discretion to obtain court orders against employers before the board’s own, convoluted, administrative process was completed — a power that, used fairly, is a crucial protection for workers. In 2007, in what has been called the September Massacre, the board issued rulings that made it easier for employers to block union organizing and harder for illegally fired employees to collect back pay. Democratic senators then blocked Mr. Bush from making recess appointments to the board, as President Bill Clinton had done. For 27 months, until March 2010, the board operated with only two members; in June 2010, the Supreme Court ruled that it needed at least three to issue decisions.

Under Mr. Obama, the board has begun to take enforcement more seriously, by pursuing the court orders that the board under Mr. Bush had abandoned. Sadly, though, the board has also been plagued by unnecessary controversy. In April, the acting general counsel issued a complaint over Boeing’s decision to build airplanes at a nonunion plant in South Carolina, following a dispute with Boeing machinists in Washington State. Although the complaint was dropped last week after the machinists reached a new contract agreement with Boeing, the controversy reignited Republican threats to cut financing for the board.

In my view, the complaint against Boeing was legally flawed, but the threats to cut the board’s budget represent unacceptable political interference. The shenanigans continue: last month, before the board tentatively approved new proposals that would expedite unionization elections, the sole Republican member threatened to resign, which would have again deprived the board of a quorum.

Mr. Obama needs to make this an election-year issue; if the board goes dark in January, he should draw attention to Congressional obstructionism during the campaign and defend the board’s role in protecting employees and employers. A new vision for labor-management cooperation must include not only a more powerful board, but also a less partisan one, with members who are independent and neutral experts. Otherwise, the partisan morass will continue, and American workers will suffer.


William B. Gould IV, a law professor at Stanford, was chairman of the National Labor Relations Board from 1994 to 1998.

You can also click this link to read my Sept. 10, 2010 blog post, which gives some background on today's labor movement.
http://knewzfrommeroewest.blogspot.com/2010/09/after-life-in-labor-union-leader.html


Union support bolsters Occupy Oakland strike
http://www.whec.com/news/stories/s2354738.shtml

Saturday, December 3, 2011

al-Qaida in Mali ---- Can Africa Get a Break ????

Or in the vernacular...."Can a brotha, and a sistah get a break????"




Between evil despots, mentally sick political demigods and military factions, Chinese and eternal Western neo-colonial greed for raw resources, now al-Qaida has established a foothold on the continent. And like a cancerous invader, it is intent on imposing it's ideology, religion and Arab culture.




May our brothers and sisters see through these and all acts of calculated 'kindness' and remain true to their own ways. May the guidance of the highest understanding inspire and lead them safely into the fullest expression of their autonomous realized potential...as individuals, communities and nations.




May Africa again lead humanity. Lead us now into new ways of being that start with the harmonious existence, health, prosperity and governance of the people of the continent. May enlightened living flow like the rivers, nurturing and restoring animals, plants, the land and all life, by the grace of right relationship.




Ashe!


Kentke







(AP Photo/ Martin Vogl, File)



In this May 17, 2010 file photo, a boy in Sokolo, Mali rides a donkey cart. A majority of Sokolo’s population make their living either in the fields of rice to its south or in the forest to its north, where they take their herds to graze. It’s in this same forest that an offshoot of al-Qaida has taken root.






Candy, cash _ al-Qaida implants itself in Africa




Dec 3, 10:39 AM (ET)By MARTIN VOGL and RUKMINI CALLIMACHI





(AP Photo/Alfred de Montesquiou, File)

In this May 17, 2010 file photo, a nomad from the Tuareg tribe of the Sahara Desert brings his herd for vaccination to a team of U.S. Special Forces in the Sahara Desert handing out aid near the town of Gao in northeastern Mali. With almost no resistance, al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, or AQIM, is implanting itself in Africa's soft tissue, choosing as its host Mali, one of the poorest nations on earth. Although AQIM's leaders are Algerian, it recruits people from Mali, including 60 to 80 Tuareg fighters, the olive-skinned nomads who live in the Sahara desert, according to a security expert who spoke anonymously because of the sensitivity of the matter.




SOKOLO, Mali (AP) -



The first time the members of al-Qaida emerged from the forest, they politely said hello. Then the men carrying automatic weapons asked the frightened villagers if they could please take water from the well.




Before leaving, they rolled down the windows of their pickup truck and called over the children to give them chocolate.




That was 18 months ago, and since then, the bearded men in tunics like those worn by Osama bin Laden have returned for water every week. Each time they go to lengths to exchange greetings, ask for permission and act neighborly, according to locals, in the first intimate look at how al-Qaida tries to win over a village.




Besides candy, the men hand out cash. If a child is born, they bring baby clothes. If someone is ill, they prescribe medicine. When a boy was hospitalized, they dropped off plates of food and picked up the tab.

With almost no resistance, al-Qaida has implanted itself in Africa's soft tissue, choosing as its host one of the poorest nations on earth. The terrorist group has create a refuge in this remote land through a strategy of winning hearts and minds, described in rare detail by seven locals in regular contact with the cell. The villagers agreed to speak for the first time to an Associated Press team in the "red zone," deemed by most embassies to be too dangerous for foreigners to visit.




While al-Qaida's central command is in disarray and its leaders on the run following bin Laden's death six months ago, security experts say, the group's 5-year-old branch in Africa is flourishing. From bases like the one in the forest just north of here, al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, or AQIM, is infiltrating local communities, recruiting fighters, running training camps and planning suicide attacks, according to diplomats and government officials.




Even as the mother franchise struggles financially, its African offshoot has raised an estimated $130 million in under a decade by kidnapping at least 50 Westerners in neighboring countries and holding them in camps in Mali for ransom. It has tripled in size from 100 combatants in 2006 to at least 300 today, say security experts. And its growing footprint, once limited to Algeria, now stretches from one end of the Sahara desert to the other, from Mauritania in the west to Mali in the east.




The group's stated aim is to become a player in global jihad, and suspected collaborators have been arrested throughout Europe, including in the Netherlands, Spain, Italy, England and France. In September, the general responsible for U.S. military operations in Africa, Army Gen. Carter Ham, said AQIM now also poses a "significant threat" to the United States.




The answer to why the group has thrived can be found in this speck of a town, where homes are made of mud mixed with straw and families eke out a living either in the fields of rice to the south or in the immense forest of short, stout trees to its north.




It's here, under a canopy stretching over an area three times larger than the city of New York, that Sokolo's herders take their cattle. They avoid overgrazing by organizing themselves into eight units linked to each of the eight wells, labeled N1 through N8, along the 50-mile-long perimeter of the Wagadou forest. They pay $5 per year per head of cattle, and $3 per head of sheep, for the right to water their animals.




When the al-Qaida fighters showed up about 1 1/2 years ago with four to five jerrycans and asked for water, they signaled that they did not intend to plunder resources. They stood out in their tunics stopping a little below the knees, small turbans and beards, a foreign style of dress associated with the Gulf states and bin Laden.




"From the moment you lay eyes on them, you know that they're not Malian," said 45-year-old herder Amadou Maiga.




They started to come every four or five days in Land Cruisers, with Kalashnikovs slung over their shoulders. At first they stayed for no more than 15 to 20 minutes, said the villagers, including herders, a hunter and employees of the Malian Ministry of Husbandry who travel to the area to vaccinate animals and repair broken pumps. If on Monday they took water from one well, on Wednesday they would go to another, always varying their path.




Fousseyni Diakite, 51, a pump technician who travels twice a month to the forest to check the generators used to run the wells, first ran into the cell in May 2010, when he saw four men in Arab dress inside a Toyota Hilux truck, all with AK-47s at their feet.




He said the men come with medical supplies and try to find out if anyone is sick.
"There is one who is tall with a big chest - he's Arab, possibly Algerian. He's known for having an ambulatory pharmacy. He goes from place to place giving treatment for free," Diakite said.
They venture into the camps where the herders sleep at dusk and hand out cash to villagers who join them for prayers, he said - bills of 10,000 West African francs (about $20), equal to nearly half the average monthly salary in Mali.




Most of the herders sleep in lean-to's in camps at the forest's edge. Because these are temporary settlements, they do not have mosques, unlike most villages in this nation twice the size of France that is 90 percent Muslim.




In Boulker, a hamlet near the forest, the fighters left 100,000 francs (around $200), instructing locals to buy supplies and build an adobe mosque, Diakite said.




"They said that for every population center with at least 10 people, there should be a mosque," he said.




Along with its poverty, Mali has an enormous geography and a weak central government - not unlike Afghanistan, where bin Laden first used the charm offensive to secure the loyalty of the local people, said Noman Benotman, a former jihadist with links to al-Qaida, now an analyst at the London-based Quilliam Foundation.



"We used to teach our people about this. It's part of the military plan - how to treat locals. This is the environment that keeps them alive," said Benotman, who first met bin Laden in Sudan and who spent years fighting alongside al-Qaida in Afghanistan. He said bin Laden gave his fighters specific instructions on how to conduct themselves: Don't argue about the price, just make the locals happy. Become "like oxygen" to them.




AQIM is taking the lesson to heart. Soon after they began taking water, one of the bearded fighters approached a shepherd at the pump to buy a ram. The fighters were looking to slaughter it to feed themselves. The shepherd offered it to him for free - too afraid to ask for money, said Maiga, the man's friend.




But the stranger refused to take the ram without payment, and immediately handed over a generous sum.




"They seem to know all the prices ahead of time. They point to a ram and say, 'I'll buy that one for 30,000 cfa ($60),'" said Maiga, quoting the highest sum a herder could expect to get for a ram in these parts. "They never bargain."




AQIM grew out of the groups fighting the Algerian government in the 1990s, after the military canceled elections to stave off victory for an Islamist party. Over the next decade, they left a trail of destruction in Algeria. Around 2003, they sent an emissary to Iraq to meet an al-Qaida intermediary, according to Benotman. Three years later, the insurgents joined the terror family, in what second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri called "a blessed union."




Since then, their attacks have taken on the hallmarks of al-Qaida. A pair of explosions this August killed 18 people as they tore through the mess hall of Algeria's military academy, with the second bomb timed to hit emergency responders.




Al-Qaida in turn appears to be learning from its affiliates, which have used kidnappings for ransom in Algeria, Yemen, Pakistan, Iraq and Afghanistan. After bin Laden's death in May, investigators found files on his hard drive showing plans to turn to kidnapping to compensate for a decline in donations.




AQIM in particular has perfected what analysts call a "kidnap economy," drawing on its refuge in Mali, according to diplomats, hostage negotiators and government officials. In 2003, the group kidnapped and transported 32 mostly German tourists from southern Algeria to Mali, where, according to a member of Mali's parliament, they struck a deal with local authorities that is still in effect today.




"The agreement was, 'You don't hurt us, we won't hurt you,'" said the parliament member, formerly involved in hostage negotiations, who asked not to be identified because of the danger involved.




The government of Mali denies these accusations, but officials cited in diplomatic cables published by WikiLeaks make the same assertion. The president of neighboring Mauritania, Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, told his American counterparts in 2009 that Mali is "at peace with AQIM to avoid attacks on its territory." Whereas the al-Qaida cell has captured more than 50 foreigners in Algeria, Niger and Mauritania, hardly any of the violence has touched Mali.




The cell has also managed to recruit local fighters, including 60 to 80 Tuaregs, the olive-skinned nomads who live in the Sahara desert, according to a security expert. And villagers say they have seen black-skinned sub-Saharan Africans in the pickups speaking the languages of Mali, Guinea and Nigeria.




"The situation in Mali is they have become locals - they are not foreigners," said Benotman. "This is really, really very, very difficult to do, and it makes it very hard to get rid of them."
One thing still stands in al-Qaida's way: Its hardcore ideology does not gel with the moderate Islam practiced by Mali's nomads. Most of them said they were afraid, caught between need for the money al-Qaida offers and wariness of its extremist beliefs.




When bin Laden died, the members of the local cell went from well to well to ask people to pray for his soul, according to Amaye ag Ali Cisse, an employee of the Ministry of Husbandry who travels twice a month to the wells to oversee the vaccination of animals.




"Everyone is uncomfortable," he said. "This is a religion that doesn't belong to us."
The herders say the fighters have not tried to impose their ideology by force. Instead, they say that the AQIM members wait until they have seen a herder at least a few times before broaching the subject.




"It was the third time that I saw them that they started preaching to me," said Maiga. "They said that everything they do is in order to seek out God."




Herder Baba Ould Momo, 29, said he tries to come up with an excuse to leave when the pickup trucks arrive at the well, because he's afraid the terror cell will pull him in. He said they backed off when they noticed he wasn't interested.




"The first thing they try to do is invite people to join them in the forest. If they see that the person is wavering, it's then that they start preaching - saying everything is transitory," said Momo, who like most of the herders wears plastic flip-flops, with a robe of wrinkled cloth. "But if the person is categorical in saying 'No,' they leave them alone."




In June, Mauritania and Mali led a rare joint attack on the al-Qaida cell in the Wagadou Forest. However, herders say that a week earlier, the al-Qaida fighters told them that an attack was imminent and that they had laid down land mines in the forest. Mauritania blames Malian officials for tipping off AQIM.




The herders said that for around two weeks, they didn't see the bearded fighters. Then they returned with a new fleet of Hilux pickup trucks, and with more men. Since then, the fighters' tracks have been all over the forest floor, in a map of constant movement, said 60-year-old hunter Cheickana Cisse. They no longer sleep in the same place.




Just as Cisse was taking a drink of water at the N7 pump on a recent evening, two pickup trucks mounted with anti-aircraft cannons and loaded with combatants drove up. The men had chains of ammunition strapped across their chests, and belts loaded with cartridges.




They laid their AK-47s in a circle on the ground to create a space to pray, like a symbolic mosque. One of them asked Cisse if he had heard of bin Laden.
"He said, 'We're like this with bin Laden,'" Cisse explained, intertwining his right and left index fingers like a link in a chain. "He said, 'We're al-Qaida.'"




The elderly hunter tried to slip away just as one of the fighters made the call to prayer.
"And they said, 'You? Aren't you going to pray?' They told me to come into the circle. I could feel them watching me," he said.




The men kneeled inside the circle of weapons. Four others guarded them, including one who climbed on the roof of the truck. Cisse tiptoed inside and began going through the prayer. "I kept stealing glances to see if they were doing the same moves as me," he said. "I know the words, but I was scared."




When the group had finished, the four who had kept vigil took their turn inside the circle. Cisse quietly walked away.




They didn't try to stop him.

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