Ten-Plus African American Companies to Support This Holiday Season

                                                     Photo courtesy of CBS Local-Atlanta
This Holiday 2017 season, we want to celebrate 10+ African American Companies and endorse thousands (maybe even hundreds of thousands) of dollars to their bottom-line. Support of African American Companies is the cornerstone of our economic development policy and is the first step in the African American revitalization of community. The ability to provide jobs to the African American community and to support African American communities around the United States, is essential to the future and a vital component of the American Dream. And remember this important fact, if you are going to buy African, make sure the seller is African or African American, so that the benefit is felt within our community.

Our recommendations have passed the first line of research, but in this day and age, it is important to be both mindful and careful shopping online. The following websites are not affiliated with this blog, and any purchases or discrepancies must be handled directly with the featured company. With that said, support your Black businesses!

Beauty & Body Care
Loc Inspirations
This beautiful Sister's company is the one stop shop for all your beauty and body care needs. You will not be disappointed and book her for a class to teach your group!

Naturally Yours Hair and Skin Care
Another beautiful Sister bringing quality products to the market!

The Honey Pot
A Place for Feminine Products, all plant based, for that special time of the month!

Polish and Company
Nail polish without the chemicals! Treat yourself and heal yourself at the same time!

Beauty Bakerie
No, not an Ice Cream Shop or a Bakery. But this company's Dessert inspired cosmetics are the business! Powder your face with many custom Nubian tones like Glaze So Icy, and share your beautiful Black tone with the world to adore!

Foxie Bombs
This girl uses all her products and we all can use a good bath soak... Check her out and enter her world.

Laws of Nature Cosmetics
Beautiful Kemetic Kush and Nubian tones for all your Sistas and made with great ingredients including love you can trust. Check out Jasmine and support!

Bekura
Salt scrubs, Body Butters, and remedies... A piece of heaven just came down and treated your skin like the Deity you are...

Oyin Handmade
Looking for quality soaps, butters, and the occassional hair products, check this company out!

Beija Flor Naturals (Concept Forty Seven)
This Sistah has an awesome store front with quality products that will keep you coming back!


Fashion
1. Nakimuli
America's Funky Sweetheart... And if you don't know, now you know!

2. Ashro
From traditional African styles to church, this is a place you will come to love!

3. Sean John
The classic style of P. Diddy, Puff Daddy Combs, is time tested and mother approved!

4. Rocawear
Made for everyone in the family and still fresh from day one!

4. Africa Fashion House
Hands down the most underrated designer in African fashion. See for yourself and convert your money for a shirt. And buy three!

5. African Imports USA
Find Fraternity & Sorority wear here, as well as Dashikis and church supplies.

6. Yatsa Fashions
An eclectic array of African fashion including dresses, shirts, and bags. You will not be disappointed at all! Shoutout to Yatsa!

7. Dupsie's
Look and find something special for someone you love!

8. Dashiki Pride 
An awesome collection of African fabrics and prints.

9. Juan Jayzz Designs
Great style, a bit pricy but well worth the personal touch. Don't sleep on this company!

10. Duro Olowu
Do not go broke trying to keep up with the Jones on this site. Hands down the most expensive. But when Michelle Obama wears his brand, this Nigerian Designer is saying something, or rather making something...

Food
The sheer number of Black owned restaurants, distributors, grocers, and farms is not to be taken for granted. Check some of these food giants out!

1. The Carolina Kitchen (DC Area)
2. Patti Labelle's Good Life (Nationwide)
3. First World Imports (Nationwide)
4. Everett & Jones (The Bay Area)
5. Cake In the City (Central Florida)
6. Sweet Home Cafe (Washington D.C.)
7. Sweet Fingers (Oakland, CA)
8. JKUB Distribution (Worldwide)
9. Scott Family Farms (Black Owned Organic Farm)
10. Grocery Outlet (Compton, California)


Musical Instruments
1. Africa Imports
Purchase that Djembe drum you've always wanted!

2. Motherland Music
The instruments and the classes you need. This is the one!

3. African Musical Instrument
This foreign site may help you find the quality you need.

Must Have Fashions
Women
1. Li Li' Gal Sheath Dress

Literature & Education
1. Papa Lemon Book
2. ABC Flash Me Cards
3. Anansi and The Pot of Beans (This is not a Black site, but features black authors)
4. Meltrek (An African American History Cartoon!)

African American Bookstores
1. African Bookstore
Find your favorite book and support African American bookstores across the country!
2. Mahogany Books
Another Black online bookstore featuring many contemporary authors.

Toys
1. Ethnic Babies
An outfit for the baby and a matching doll. Sweet as can be!
2. ToyRus
Its a Black doll blitz! Cheap and weird for this company, so as a last choice, get in and out quick for they disappear!

Art
1. Art of Maisha
The gift of art is both a lifestyle and painting for this beautiful Sistah. When you see what you like, get yours before it's gone. Her paintings are the business!

2. Its A Black Thing
This site has everything from calendars, Christmas Cards, to Artwork & Jackets

3. The Black Art Depot
Hands down my new favorite art site! I'm sure you'll find the exact picture, poster, or stationary you want.

4. Sahel Pride
Looking for that African Mask for the wall?

5. Artyfactory
Another African Mask Site...

6. African Sculptures
Find a true seller from this ebay link

The African Series: Upcoming Articles this Month

                                           The African Renaissance; Dakar Senegal

The African Series presents five articles concerning the social, political, intellectual, economic, and health of Africans on the continent and in diaspora. Until, the tribes of the Motherland, again reassert themselves, we will continue to suffer worldwide under a Global Racial Capitalist Patriarchy Military Supremacy Complex, welded by European Conglomerates and their Governments, Asian Investor Opportunists, State-less Religious Militia Organizations, Foreign Governments & their Military Alliances, International Bank Cartels, and the Christian/Muslim hypocrisies. The 21st Century will mark the return of the African as the most populous people on Earth. By 2050, the continent of Africa will boost more people than China and India. Thus, we must make the proper plans to neutralize and destroy any organization set against the return of Kemet (Black Land). We must overthrow the religious monopoly of Christianity and Islam, which has succeeded in both dividing and conquering the tribes and minds of the people. We must reorganize our military supremacy of our territory. And we must industrialize the continent with technology that enhances nature and reverses the tide of pollution, spawn by foreign European technology, destroying our lands for the future generations. This is a call to return to your tribes for all in diaspora and on the continent.

Featured Articles:
1. Africa America: 525 Years of Enslavement; 52 Years Post Civil Rights and the Lessons Learned...
2. The Afro American Census 2018-2019: A Detailed Report on the African People in Diaspora in North & South America.
3. The 21st Century: The Age of Revolution & The Departure of Foreign Colonialism from Africa. 
4. Ten African & African American Owned Companies For Holiday Shopping.
5. The Black Cartoons: Cartoons For Black Children and Black Minds 

West Oakland Imports
WestOaklandImports@gmail.com
Mr. Cowan Amaye-Obu (Owner/Writer)
CFAmayeobu@gmail.com
Mr. Peter Commons (Writer/Editor)
PeterLCommons@gmail.com

Africa America: 525 Years of Enslavement, 52 Years Post-Civil Rights, and Lessons Learned...

                                                   

The Middle Passage courtesy of Aoxoa 

There is much to be said of the tribal African experience for the past 525 years. The horror, trauma, shame, and the inhumane godless injustice has permeated the souls of 15 Generations of our people. The lessons learned are fit to begin the writing of another Holy Book, detailing our misfortune, travesty, and survival, in the face of a Godless People, declaring their God, and their debauchery in the anguish and blood of our children. Such a sacrifice cannot be forgotten. The latest lesson, Fifty-two years, after the mass Black American revolutions, later coined, The Civil Rights Movement, Black Americans are still struggling to gain equitable opportunity and justice in the United States. The same circumstances can be shared with all the tribes of the African continent, where the claws of European Neo-Colonialism has dug deep and lasting trenches, into the psyche, souls and bodies of the original people of the Earth.

What can be said has already been documented? Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow, is the tip of a massive iceberg of the continued undeclared warfare and mass incarceration of African bodies to a Global Racial Capitalist Patriarchy Military machine. There are other places of discovery of this global complex, Carter G. Woodson wrote, The Miseducation of the Negro (1933), to sound the alarms about the state of our education early in the 20th Century. The record of books and discoveries shining light is now casting a shadow upon a real beast, hidden behind human governments and multinational corporations, which seeming invincible, must be confronted and killed for our true liberation and spiritual intellectual revival. A recent light, given little attention, written by Harriett Washington in, Medical Apartheid (2007), details our biggest horrors and fears of purposeful and planned medical experimentation on African bodies from slavery to the present day. We are the victims and survivors of a failed genocide, the innocent tribes of the Motherland.

                                             The Middle Passage courtesy of Aoxoa

                                           Muslim Slave Trade courtesy of Proofschool.Org
A river of tears laments the past and present circumstances of the people of Africa. We are guilty of sleeping with the enemy, baring their toil and children, but we cannot forget who our enemies are. While the European transported over 25 million tribal people from their Homelands across the ocean, the Arab Muslims were selling over 34 million of our fellow brothers and sisters into enslavement in Europe and Asia. The lessons to be learnt cannot be abandoned, and the new evidence against what has captured us, cannot be discarded as conspiracy. We are still alive today, because of the spirits of the Ancestors within us, who have lived for thousands of years, are again sent to us in our children. They give us hope and we must not forget to teach them the tribal culture to survive the onslaught. (To answer the call, Menes of 3100 BCE, after uniting all the tribes of Abyssinia and Punt, fought to repel all the thieves, murderers, rapists, slavers, foreign priests, soldiers, and machinists invaders of the land. After he had succeeded, the nation united by the tribes was called Kemet (Egypt), the Land of the Blacks. Today, we make another such call.) These lessons, teach them to your children and never forget, our cult, our culture, what we have done and will do as Ethiopian people. Ashe 

-Cowan Amaye-Obu
CFAmayeobu@gmail.com

This featured video is an essential discussion for both the African who has forgotten both in diaspora and on the continent, as well as those who has been awaken to consciousness.

Numbers or Discipline: The Fight for Discipline in America's Schools

" I want to introduce your new teacher. -Administrator"
"I don't give a f*** about her. -Student"
" (Name), she's a nice teacher. Now you need to go to class.- Administrator"
"No! -Student"

Imagine being a teacher in today's schools, where discipline has taken a back seat to the notion that each student represents a number that affects school funds. Or imagine being the above new teacher, who at the end of the school day, was observed asking how to assign detention to students who refused to leave her class, disrupting the learning environment, and her first day. The idea of discipline in today's Public and Charter schools have lead to high teacher turn over, a sense of normalcy with lower student test scores due to failure to reach learning benchmarks, and an increase in At-Risk students, exposing the lack of consistency and in-depth procedures among School Administrators in US schools. Has the number of children in the classroom eclipsed the need to educate our students? Has discipline of children and students, taken a backseat to the financial bottom line of schools?

                                               Bullied Teacher Photo featured on LaborFest.Com 
"How do you handle a student who refuses to do work in your classroom -(unnamed Principal in new teacher Interview)?"

Interviewing teachers have come to expect the above question which outlines their classroom discipline plan and method for resolving behavior issues of prospective students. However, the question has gained a double meaning as student discipline has increasingly been placed on the shoulders of teachers, often causing teachers to illicit fearful classroom experiences with problem students. School Administrators have made a huge gamble, exchanging discipline for alternative behavior models for handling discipline, such as restorative justice, least restrictive environments, and tracking learning & behavior accommodations, which results in paper trails, Individual Education Plans (IEP), and behavior referrals. Alternative behavior management models have come to replace detention, out of school suspension, and expulsion, the older model for deterring negative behavior. In fact, in many Public and Charter schools, Administrators have put the bulk of burden of discipline on Teachers, which is unprecedented, a violation of Teacher Union negotiated practices, and extremely cumbersome. The effect is a reported reduction in suspensions and interventions, with the development of Alternative School systems. In true embrace of these methodologies, school administrators have instituted such models in classrooms across the nation, increasing numbers to positively report, while ignoring a growing trend. High annual teacher turnover and burn out has begun to change the faces within the classroom annually, and often by semester, as teachers in response to the new workload, prefer to resign positions in less established, Alternative Discipline schools for institutes with firm administrations and proven discipline records. Gone are the days when elementary children and secondary students could hope to be taught by the same teacher as their older siblings. Gone are the days when school Administrators and Principals held together strong schools with values, conviction, and accountability. In fact, the truth about high teacher turnover in today's schools, particularly charter schools,  is a symptom of their problem. How can a school with over 60% teacher turnover, produce a graduation and college acceptance rate at 80-90%? By placing behavior management in the hands of teachers, and out of the office of administrators, who ordinarily would develops in-depth school-wide discipline plans to institute in the overall school plan and culture. This is a total violation of the essential goals of restorative justice and alternative behavior models, and the evidence of the hidden facts of discipline gone array in today's schools.

As a result, Teachers dedicate 25-30% more of their classroom planning and teaching time to resolving behavior issues. The extra time is often unpaid and highly stressful, resulting in additional parental, IEP, & counselling meetings. By the end of the school year, teachers are exhausted from literal physical fatigue, emotional drain, and lack of personal time, which is reduced by additional time spent on behavior modification. In comparison, while teacher work schedules have increased across K-12, School Administrators, Principal, Vice-Principal, Deans, have less work loads, shorter days, arrive late/leave early, and an increased salary.

Lighter work loads for schools administrators does not mean the job is getting easier, it means there has been a transfer of work to teachers. If a student is sent out of class for constant profanity, or being a class disruption after multiple warnings, and the Principal sends the student directly back to class, the unresolved issue is left back in the hands of the teacher, while creating the thought in the student's mind that there are no consequences for misbehavior. The unresolved misbehavior must be dealt with during class time, and often leads to miscommunication and worst problems, then the initial issue. Essentially, this type of cycle is a violation of most Teacher Contracts according to established procedures incorporated in many Teacher Union Contracts in the 1970s. However, this type of situation is becoming more common in schools with less resources, novice Administrators, and overloaded Teachers. The alternative behavior model has created less work for Administration, but drowned the teacher in a cycle of behavioral management and stress. Essentially, we are witnessing the fall of the American Public School system into disrepair. A disrepair that may be the strategy of private investors and educators.

Doing A Job: Principal
The initial benefit for having a professional clerical team for public schools was because on site School Administrations could record on site data, organize essential functions of schools outside the classroom, and handle problem situations should they arise, leaving the teacher, the job of simply teaching. This argument was dominant in the early negotiations for higher salaries, and has continued to the present day with the highly important piece, Administrative accountability. Principals answer to School Boards, and their direct Superintendent Supervisors, and are often sucked into the political theater which engulfs both the School Board and the office of the Superintendent. Principals also receive evaluations which assess their performance through Administrative benchmarks and are completed by their immediate Supervisor (who is not onsite), and teachers. Often, this evaluation process misses the everyday nuisances, like does the Principal have a strong presence on the school campus, in the hallways and in the classroom? Does the Principal promote, encourage, and enforce a positive school environment. Thus, the possibility of retaining School Officials whose performance on paper is proficient, but concerning real onsite criteria, may not be included in an evaluation such as teacher support, workday routine, event planning, and communication is lacking, creates a stressful workplace for teachers. The real physical presence of Administrators on campus, in classrooms, and in formal assemblies of the students, is a major factor in establishing school culture and deterring negative behavior. Often, the lack of resources to have a sufficient number of Administrators, such as Deans, to effectively operate a school site becomes the first symptom of a declining school, failing school-wide policy, and overburdened Teachers. Still, a Principal can set the tone for a great learning institution with an visual implementation of planning, or become engulfed in the politics of the position and find themselves behind a desk, behind a closed door, while teachers struggles to educate students, and balance their lives with long work hours.

The Union Vs. The Union:

This article is not anti-Union and promotes a more robust representation. It is important to know, teacher unions have to fight to negotiate working salaries fairly distributed by the budget and for the rights of teachers in violation or accused of wrong doing. This fight often can be resolved between the County Representative and the teacher. However, when negotiation and mediation have run its course the court system will decide where the violation has occurred.

A Teacher's Union which primarily defers to resolutions between the School and Teacher is an extension of the school system. This type of Union cannot fight in the best interest of its teachers because the "in house" investigation rules and regulations are entirely different from a court case, and often uphold violations of the teacher's negotiated contract. A Teacher's Union which uses the local court system is in fact a true representation of the teacher and can obtain the rights and privileges teachers deserve. Still, school Administrators, Principals, Deans, Board Members, & Superintendents all enjoy an alternative unions, and inflated salaries made off the backs and often in opposition of teachers. Educators should understand the entire system and when their interests are placed against each other. Only then can the fight to educate be waged appropriately for America's schools.

Conclusion:
Is the number of students in a school more important than discipline? Why is high teacher turnover an indication that school Administration has become docile and ineffective? Finally, will the Teacher's Union be able to appropriately defend the rights of teachers? If the strategy against America's Public School System is to allow them to self implode from disorganization, then higher numbers, lack of teachers, poor Administration, and poor representation will be the causes, to the effect. The people who benefit from this failure, other than the peons in the halls of power, will be the Private Education Institutions, the American Penal Systems, and the large Corporate interests. The people who will suffer, will be the average Americans, who cannot afford private schools, the minorities, and the poor. Unfortunately, the people who will suffer are the majority of Americans.

Written by Mr. Cowan Amaye-Obu (Teacher)

How The West Won: Why The Hip Hop Throne Lives On The West Coast?

                                                   
                                                                   Advertisement From Hot 97 (1996)
Ask around who is the best rapper in the game today? You might get, "Kendrick Lamar," or "The Game." Of course you will hear, "Jay-Z," and South Florida is definitely going to throw, "Rick Ross," on the table. And "Common," of Chicago, dropped another classic album. "Nas," remains like a reigning legendary god with Harvard University's WEB Dubios Research Center dedicating a Fellowship, in his honor. The Greats still remain at the top of their games, and the influence of Hip Hop Icons like "50 Cent," "Diddy," "Snoop Dogg," "Scarface," "Eminem," and "The Lox," measure in real economic terms. The entire Hip Hop World fell silent when word of the Infamous, "Prodigy," of Mobb Deep passed away. A huge figure, controversial, and real in his message and ultimate goal. In his wake, we are reminded that the presence of an authentic movement with conscious wordplay is the essence of Hip Hop, and what its original goal has always been, to spread a great message or story across great distances. Who can deny that the West Coast is representing like no other coast or region, today?

After word in 2014, Dr. Dre signed a deal to sell his Hip Hop influenced Headphones, Beats Electronics, to Apple for over $3 Billion dollars, giving Dre nearly $620 million in one year, the entire West Coast applauded. The Game dropped The Documentary 2, and 1992, two critically acclaimed classic albums. Compton Rapper, YG bursted in the game and dropped a film on Netflixs. Nipsey Hussle has kept the competition live and street. And last, but not even the least because we are not going to talk about "Snoop Dogg," Kendrick Lamar is challenging the dominant discourse in America with his controversial albums from Overly Dedicated (2010) to his latest, Damn (2017), to see what is going on in the Black community. The drum beat of the West Coast cannot be ignored and is putting the issues of Black Life, front and center, to all Americans. The clarity of issues from police brutality, economic disparity, judicial injustice, gang violence, misogyny, marijuana inequities, and promoting unified movement is all here, on The West. The After-School Generation (2008-2017) of Hip Hop in the North and the South, cannot escape the "party life," and therefore, their message and wordplay has suffered tremendously. Their nursery rhymes and delivery often ends up jokes, but what they represent is still respected, even if it is a shadow of better times.

Why does the Hip Hop Throne live on the West Coast? During the East Coast-West Coast Wars, it was a matter of debate. Which coast is saying something real versus delivering Gangster-isms, 'Pimp'isms, and other misleading messages that the Old School did not accept, and the New School glorified in? The new After School Generation is guilty of the same sin. The answer is, the West Coast stayed the same and on message. The East Coast went from lyrical beasts and jazzy beats to Down South bass lines and catchy phrases. The New School heads asked what happened to New York since Cash Money, Master P, and Trick Daddy burst on the scene? The East Coast Giants still rock and tour like Ghostface and the Wu, Fat Joe, Busta Rhymes, The Tribe Called Quest, and Onyx. The Southern Giants coming on the coat-tails of Outkast and The Dungeon Family still rides with Lil Wayne, TI, and Young Jeezy. South Florida and The Midwest have their own categories, but the unified movement for the entire coast, is missing. Call it ego or shortsightedness?  The singers are "bodying" the rappers here, on the East. But on the West, The Dub (W) is King.

 Hip Hop culture can look to California as an example for how to support and move as a unit, as a team, and as a movement. And if you're sleeping on The Game's last two albums, or Kendrick Lamar's Damn, well maybe you're stuck in the party-life too!

Written by Mr. Cowan Amaye-Obu
WestOaklandImports@gmail.com

PS. Shoutout to Uncle Murda!

Hollywood, The Capital of Propaganda, Not for Me or Other Respectable African Americans...

                                                     Photo courtesy of Hulu
Amid the barrage of movies, television premieres and season finales, popular commercials, and streaming channels are the major Entertainment Studios, Record Labels, and their sponsors. In 2016, the major production houses of Hollywood racked in $11.17 Billion. The American Music industry racked in over $7.7 Billion, and the new, but powerfully stable internet streaming channels like Netflix made $8.8 Billion, alone. The Age of Hollywood, never looked better or so promising. Especially, when even the major Hollywood Sponsors like The Pentagon, Silicon Valley, the Beverage Companies Coca Cola & Pepsi, Big Tobacco, and the top American Breweries are also reaping record profits. Hollywood and the major studios are pushing so many images, ideas, and personalities on television and the internet, even your personal cell phone cannot escape the business advertisements and commercials. The agenda in Tinsel Town, the capital of Propaganda, is whatever sells, White Americanism, Youth-ism, violence & Blind American Imperial Militancy, Extreme liberalism, Gay Feminism, Average Humor, a sprinkle of color for diversity, and of course, no recourse, except for the occasional apology.
                                     
                                Photo Courtesy of Hulu
Move Over Bill Cosby. Bring In Empire

The saddest part about losing the image of Bill Cosby to the recent sex scandals is not only the fall of an American Icon, but the departure from original wholesome Black Entertainment with values to the re-emergence of American Black caricatures on television and cinema.

 Image the excitement and utter disappointment for an African American film winning the Academy Award (Moonlight 2017), to witness two adolescent boys kissing, with my teenage son and elementary daughter. These are not values encouraged within my home or the African American community at large, so why would Hollywood propagate these ideas attempting to implant in the psyche of my children and the minds of others?

The quality of African American cinema and music has not only taken a nose dive, but the image of African Americans onscreen and on the radio has once again been hijacked by Foreign Idealists. These Idealists have no value nor class, but they expound themselves to be the very pillars of African American society, having merely existed on the fringes because of their loose morals. In this current Propaganda Hollywood atmosphere, these powerful Black Directors, producers, actors and recording artists are brilliant because they fit the exact role designed for them to play. They are the American Black Caricature, exactly what popular White American Entertainment wants and imagines Black America to be. For this reason, these individuals are most dangerous to the African plight in America.

The earliest attempts by African Americans to grace the silver screen and music recording industry carried not only genius and talent, but class and a sense of struggle. Remember Mahalia Jackson's gospel songs, Bessie Smith's Blues, and Josephine Baker's jazz, brought the best of the Negro to the stage and held everyone in awe? Remember Harry Belafonte and Dorothy Dandridge, or Sidney Poitier, Hattie McDaniels, and Claudia McNeil? How about Ruby and Ossie Davis, and the old geniuses, Ray Charles, Stevie Wonder and "the classy," Bill Cosby? These magnificent entertainers laid the foundation for African Americans in Entertainment by being the opposite of what Hollywood expected. Their avant garde performance was to be ordinary "negroes," and to show how average Black life really was and it was genius. It was from their respected work to have Black life portrayed on television, that Black Cinema and music, in the late 1960s and 1970s were allowed to flourish to the level where Hollywood exploited the Black American movie and record market for the lucrative sales and images. Many Black Actors and Artists not mentioned, but well respected were influenced by this same core and time period. Still, the lesson the community learned was that the image of African Americans must be created and maintained by talented African Americans. White America will always casts and perpetuate negative types for Blacks. This lesson, gave Black cinema Bill Cosby, Whoopi Goldberg, Carl Weathers, Oprah Winfrey, Robert Townsend, and Spike Lee in the 1980s and Kenaan Ivory Wayans, John Singleton, Denzel Washington, Will Smith and Martin Lawerance in the 1990s. At the core of African American entertainment was the common struggle of bringing ordinary Black American life to the stage or radio. So, what has happened? Please excuse those celebrated performers who have not been listed in the article for the greater point.

From the Cosby Show to The Real Wives of Atlanta and from Roc & Family Matters to Empire, the fabric of African American Entertainment has lost its value. The image of African Americans has fallen back to the same Black caricatures from the original Birth of the Nation and early Hollywood films. Why? The answer is the focus has shifted from simply having a normal Black image on screen to the notion of what it takes to be award winning in Hollywood. It is no longer enough to be Black American famous, but to be this notion of "White" famous. Then, in comes the classification of being an A B or C list actor. No one wants to be a C list actor, so what do I need to do to be more famous? Forgetting that the African or Black image is most important, these brilliant actors, producers and Directors take on parts which are lucrative and questionable. Often, these questionable parts are the only parts available for African American actors, so, do you want a job or do you want to be out of work, out of sight, and soon out of Hollywood?

As Hollywood continues to flood television, the internet, and radio with whatever sells, White Americanism, Youth-ism, violence & Blind American Imperial Militancy, Gay Feminism, Average Humor, a sprinkle of color for diversity, and of course, no recourse, except for the occasional apology, the image of African Americans suffers from lack of originality and moral character. The dangerous contradiction to the traditional struggle of African Americans to create a positive image of themselves represents the current confusion of this Black Entertainer generation to understand their responsibility to our community rather than their ego and themselves. As long as Hollywood continues to encourage their intellectual madness and major sponsorship agendas, for the sake of entertainment, there is no message coming out of Hollywood in a movie, television show or song that represents true African American excellency and the struggle for something ordinary and better. With few exceptions of course. We thank the producers of Birth of a Nation, Power, The Carmichael Show, Steve Harvey, all of Tyler Perry's work, and other quality African American Productions/Broadway shows.

"Check your ingredients, before you overdose on the cool -Lupe Fiasco The Cool."



Written by Peter L. Commons
PeterLCommons@gmail.com

How Many There Are: The Nuclear Age

                                                    Public Video Courtesy of CTBTO Hashimoto 2003 

          The atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki effectively ended World War II, with The United States and its allies declaring ultimate victory over The Axis Powers, Germany, Italy, and the Empire of Japan. However, the victory was short lived and the military build up which ensued WWII, culminated into the Cold War between the victors, The United States and The Soviet Union. Since WWII, the world has experienced many regional wars for control of land, resources, and people. This era can accurately be termed the Nuclear Age, when nuclear technology was actively displayed, expanded, and experimented, for force of arms in the post- WWII reshuffling of political alliances. Amid Post-Modern threats of Nuclear War rhetoric between North Korea and the United States under the Donald Trump Administration, it is important to recall Nuclear History.
         History post-World War has been heavily censored and manipulated in order to cultivate a general population into asserting strategic ideologies such as democracy, capitalism, communism, ethnic, and national superiority. For example, most American high school seniors complete their history curriculum with the study of WWII. However, most of these students will not study Contemporary History, which covers World History post- 1960. Thus, these students will have a limited understanding of the Revolutions which occurred around the world in the 1960s-1990s, The Vietnam War, The Nixon Era, The Reagan Era, The Iran-Contra episodes, and all major world events from September 11th to the Global Financial Meltdown of 2008. This omission of historical events allows for this American Generation to make critical mistakes on the international stage, such as President Trump's recent call for military intervention in Venezuela, including the misunderstanding of why South Americans cringe at the thought of the US military invading South America. The average American citizen might ask, "when did the US ever invade South America," and fail to recognize the history of the American military presence in South America from the late 1970s through the late 1990s.
        The same historical omission of details occurs when the conversation or topic centers on Nuclear technology. The knowledge of most Millennials about the use of Nuclear arms is limited to Hiroshima and Nagasaki during the final phase of WWII. However, older American Generations can remember their experiences of Nuclear Drills in school, Mars Bluff, the Three Mile Island Accident, and the Arkansas Nuclear Incident. Military officials and veterans can recite many more nuclear incidents. In short, the misinformation has in turn become a wide spread miseducation of the American public about the Nuclear Program in the United States. Today, we will attempt to re-educate readers about the history of Nuclear arms around the world.
       In 2003, The CTBTO Preparatory Commission of Japan, published an illustration of the number of nuclear explosions on Earth between 1945-1998, using government sources. The illustrator, Isao Hashimoto provided a visual time lapse of each explosion giving viewers a real idea of the Nuclear Age. It is important to note, since the publishing of this video, many countries have entered the Nuclear Powers race, including Australia, South Africa, Israel, North Korea, and Iran. Adding to the number of nuclear explosions and the potential threat of Nuclear exchange for trivial regional disputes, alliances, and war.  
       Finally, the greatest threat to human civilization is not nuclear technology, but the uses of such enormous power to intimidate, curtail, and indoctrinate the masses with the agenda of the few. It is a shame that such a natural discovery, has behind its power, military sponsors, instead of creative Geniuses, or even commercial organizations, and has yet to yield its greatest advantages for human civilization. The purpose of this article is to educate and not to sway opinion towards feuding ideologies (Democracy vs. Communism) or the national security of sovereign nations. The rise and fall of Robert Oppenheimer, the physicist called "the father of the Atomic Bomb," is a testament in the dubious nature of the uses of nuclear technology, its sponsors, and administration. It is not naivete, nor immature to believe nuclear energy can by used to service human civilization in a manner that catapults our race into a new age of exploration and invention. However, it is not inconceivable, that if it continues to be sponsored by Nationalist States and their Military-Industrialist programs, that nuclear energy will find its greatest discoveries and uses, as a weapon. No one region or regime, has an monopoly on intelligence.

Written by Peter Commons
West Oakland Imports Publishers 2017
PeterLCommons@gmail.com

Sources:
CTBTO Preparatory Commission 2003
The Day After Trinity Documentary (Robert Oppenheimer) 1981
North Korea Fiery Rhetoric Al Jazeera 2017
North Korea Hints Its Developing Advance Nuclear Arsenal NY Times 2017
Latin America Rejects Trump's Military Threat Against Venezuela Reuters 2017

Devil In The Details: The African Census Report 2017-2018

                                             All Rights Reserved Next Big Future 2100 (2016)

The Abstract
According to the United Nations,the population of Africa is posed to match the population of Asia by 2050 and to outpace Asia by the turn of the next century. The accessibility of this information via the CIA’s World Factbook and the widely used online encyclopedia, Wikipedia, demonstrate the core principles of the internet, to promote the wide exchange of information. Out of date information and omissions serve the purpose of comparing and constructing a partial image of actual African nations. Essentially, on a basic level, this information can be the used to reconstruct and update vital information in relation to the continent, serving as the initial bridge to knowledge and link to studies both conducted and ongoing, such as in the most important African centered work in a century, the Africana Encyclopedia (2000). The census marks a beginning point of reassessment, consensus, and ultimately, promotes African unity and development, using data and connecting the 20^th Century past, with the present and future 21^st Century. 

Population: From 1 To Over 4 Billion People and Growing vs. White Oppression using African Faces

It is well known that the population of Africa will implode during the 21^st Century and outpace/overtake the population of Asia, as the most populated continent in the world. After meticulous analysis it is possible to ascertain outside measures to control the African population, on the continent, and worldwide with classified epidemics, pandemic experimentation, social engineering, genocide, and war. Meanwhile, the ability to capture and maintain the flow of African territory (ocean trade routes), resources (oil, gold, uranium, diamonds, etc) and currency wealth (dollars, Francs, etc.) into European and Asian treasuries is essential to maintain foreign regimes. The fear of the return of the Kemetian, is very real considering the implications to European and Asian society. The loss of African wealth, means the loss of hegemony in the world, and the West, The East, The Communist, the Democratic, and the Religious, will risk everything including nuclear war to maintain it. To be clear, what the current powers of the world wish to maintain is the control of the African wealth, which was loss during the fall of the gold mines of Mali, obtained during the Arab and Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, and maintained during the neocolonialism of Post WWII, United Nations-Cold War Superpowers Era. The extraction of enslaved humans in numbers of excess of 60 million people by the Arabs and Europeans, in conjunction with the extraction of massive amounts of wealth, and modern warfare has left an open wound of trauma for generations of Africans on the continent and in the worldwide diaspora.

 Pan-Africanism has ultimately been declared the militarily, economic, political, intellectual, and social ideology which could free the African people and continent from the Asian and European Imperial invasion. The philosophy of Pan-Africanism has also been declared against the national interest of the United States, Israel, South Africa, Spain, and Europe. African unity equates to the loss of security for Europe, major loss of trade, and a plunge back into the Middle Ages fear of invasion by the Moorish North Africa and the destabilization of the Near East, with the support and establishment of justice for Africans and the Palestinians, which Africans are historically, most likely to pursue. What this loss to Europe is, amounts to the opposite to Africa. It means a return of African wealth, resources, and currency back to the African. This is no small feat, as the wealth of Africa is coveted and extracted to maintain European domination of the world. The implosion of Africa to the African, amounts to endless opportunity, and change in perspective to value all things African for the sake of Africans. The entire world is about to experience either a dynamic paradym shift in power to Africa or a mechanized organization for the enslavement and domination of the entire African race, the original race of humans. 

Hence, the 21^st Century will see the reinvestment by the West, and the East in using Africans to destabilize Africa. This is called White Oppression using African Faces. Thus, key developments are essential to the renaissance of the society of the African, as self determined, truly independent, and the new rulers of the Earth. 

List of African Nations & Territories (Total 67)

   1.      People’s Democratic Republic of Algeria

   2.      Republic of Angola

   3.      Republic of Benin

   4.      Republic of Botswana

   5.      Republic of Burkina Faso

   6.      Republic of Burundi

   7.      Republic of Cabo Verde

   8.      Republic of Cameroon

   9.      Canaries (Autonomous Community of Spain)  

  10.  Central African Republic

  11.  Ceuta (Autonomous City of Spain)

  12.  Chagos Archipelago (British Overseas Territory)

  13.  Republic of Chad

  14.  Union of the Comoros

  15.  Congo (Democratic Republic of)

  16.  Congo (Republic of)

  17.  Republic of Cote D’Ivoire

  18.  Republic of Djibouti

  19.  Arab Republic of Egypt

  20.  Republic of Equatorial Guinea

  21.  State of Eritrea

  22.  Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia

  23.  French Southern & Antarctic Lands (France Overseas Territory)

  24.  Gabonese Republic (Gabon)

  25.  The Islamic Republic of Gambia

  26.  The Republic of Ghana

  27.  The Republic of Guinea

  28.  The Republic of Guinea-Bissau

  29.  Republic of Kenya

  30.  Kingdom of Lesotho

  31.  Republic of Liberia

  32.  State of Libya

  33.  Republic of Madagascar

  34.  Madeira (Autonomous Region of Portugal)

  35.  Republic of Malawi

  36.  Republic of Mali

  37.  Islamic Republic of Mauritania

  38.  Department of Mayotte (Overseas Region and Department of France)

  39.   Melilla (Autonomous City of Spain)

  40.  Republic of Mauritius

  41.  Kingdom of Morocco

  42.  Republic of Mozambique

  43.  Republic of Nambia

  44.  Republic of Niger

  45.  Federal Republic of Nigeria

  46.  Pelagie Islands

  47.  Plazas De Soberania

  48.  Reunion (Region of France)

  49.  Republic of Rwanda

  50.  Democratic Republic of Sao Tome & Principe  

  51.  Saint Helena (Ascension & Tristan De Cunha  )

  52.  Republic of Senegal

  53.  Republic of Seychelles

  54.  Republic of Sierra Leone

  55.  Federal Republic of Somalia

  56.  Somaliland

  57.  Republic of South Africa

  58.  Republic of South Sudan

  59.  Republic of Sudan

  60.  Kingdom of Swaziland

  61.  United Republic of Tanzania

  62.  Togolese Republic (Togo)

  63.  Republic of Tunisia

  64.  Republic of Uganda

  65.  Western Sahara (Disputed Morocco)

  66.  Republic of Zambia 

  67. Republic of Zimbabwe

 The lasting effects of European systems of government such as republics and democracies, as well as military aided foreign religions like Christianity and Islam, do more to further enslave native Africans to foreign methods of psychological and consequently, physical control. Part one of this study, to be submitted in full article form is call The African Census Report 2016-2017 (Part 1). This report is restricted to the African continent. In 2013, West Oakland Imports published an unofficial census of Blacks in the Americas. The completion of this study, marks a full study of Africans in diaspora in the Americas, North, Central, and South, and now, Africans on the continent. The final addition will be the accumulation of Blacks abroad in Europe and Asia. The most important information amassed from the study are the individual national analysis of African nations A-Z. For example, from the study:

                                                    World Atlas Rights Reserved 2016

    "Botswana

            This work seems to add a powerful footnote to European information. In the case of Botswana, the CIA does not list their top Export and import partners. What is listed as that the largest trading item is Diamonds, copper, nickel, salt, as well as, coal, iron ore, and silver. Botswana may be a major source of wealth, which is being exploitively extracted and exported out. In comparison, Wikipedia reveals that De Beers Mining and Diamond Trader out of Luxembourg, Luxembourg, own 50% of the country’s mining operations. De Beers annual revenue exceeds $7.1 billion. Still, 30% of the people of Botswana lived below poverty in 2003, an updated figure is truly desirable as to ascertain where and why such wealth is annually pulled out of an area, and due to unequal distribution, few citizens receive their fair share. Both World Factbook and Wikipedia have figures from the latest 2009.

 Why does the CIA hide the national trade partners of Botswana? Is this lucrative contractual mining an unpopular or illegal operation? Botswana’s $6,040 per capita GDP exposes a delicate situation in an immense exchange of wealth for food and poverty

 (The Black Census Report 2016-2017 Botswana)." 

The Carot

The GDP, Trade, and Health analysis, of each individual African nation exposes "the devil in the details."  We hope and encourage donations, as the article in segmented form is scheduled to feature as the Feature Article in the Inaugural Edition of The American Mastodon Publication series one. The African Census Report 2016-2017, is one of the most important written works for Africans, since Michelle Alexander's New Jim Crow, and the publishing of The Encylcopedia Africana by Dr. Henry Louis Gates (2000). Our sources included The CIA, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and Wikipedia, the largest internet Encyclopedia. Finally, with such an immense task and carot of information presented, we submit part one of The Black Census Report 2016-2017. Please email PeterLCommons @gmail.com for more information or your copy. The members of West Oakland Imports thank and salute you for your support in our launch of critically essential discourse, for the intellectual digest of our readers.