STEPPING STONES 03/26/17 By KASIMU INC. Investment and Property Management "When you need to be worry free..."

Volume 3, Issue 13, March 26, 2017

In this issue...

Public Service Announcements

Quote Of The Week: Kwame Toure’

Book Of The Month: “Yi Jin Jing” Compiled By The Chinese Health Qigong Association

It’s YOUR Health: Sewage Waste Energy/Waste To Energy

Historical Fact Of The Week: History Of Trindad & Tobago and Afro-Trinidadians and Tobagonians

Editorial Commentary: Coming!        

Public Service Announcements

• The rechartering for The Head Cornerstone Corporation in the State Of Delaware as well as all updated business licenses and associated issues are forth coming pending litigation. Thank you.
• Visit WWW.Ready.gov at your earliest convenience so that you may be informed of basic protective measures before, during, and after disasters/emergencies, learn disaster prepared activities, training, plans, and what shelters are in or near your community, develop an emergency plan for yourself and your family in the event of an actual disaster/emergency, build an disaster/emergency supply kit including a basic emergency medical/trauma bag in case of an event, and GET INVOLVED!
• Get your CPR (Cardio-Pulomonary Resuscitation) and Basic First Aid/First Responder/Basic Life Support including child birth and Emergency Pediatric Care training today. Check with the American Heart Association at WWW.Heart.org for locations. It may just save a life.
•  It’s a lot of fun and excitement, it’s healthy, it’s a great family activity, and it’s very practical. Find a course in self-defense for you and your loved ones and learn to protect yourselves. You just never know.
•  We have the constitutional right to BEAR ARMS and many states have the CCW (Conceal Carry Weapon) License for when you and your loved ones are outside of your home environment. Search the web for free information concerning the Conceal Carry Laws as well as other valuable information. Get the CCW License today (where applicable) for you and your family members of age and LEARN HOW TO SHOOT. You’ll feel better that you did.
•  WATER; it’s very essential for normal body functions and not only carries nutrients to your cells, but flushes out the toxins in are bodies that lead to diseases such as cancers, diabetes, and heart diseases. According to the Mayo Clinic and the Institute of Health, water consumption varies for each person depending on many factors associated with life styles, such as current health, activities, and where you live. Be informed about what your daily intake should be and “drink up”. It will make YOUR world a better place.

Public Service Announcements

are brought to you by

 COMMUNITY INTERNATIONAL                 

   

Within our African American communities, there is a DISEASE; drug gangs as well as other organized criminal organizations. Before and after any conversation and until we remove the disease…

“…we will continue to SUFFER from exceptionally HIGH crime rates (burglaries, extortion, racketeering, money laundering, prostitution/teen prostitution, illegal weapons, auto thefts, etc.), INCREASED violent crimes (murders, assaults, rapes, kidnappings, robberies, gang rapes, child molestations, child endangerment/abuse, etc.), DECREASED land values, decreased BUSINESS INVESTMENTS AND DEVELOPMENT, DECREASED employment opportunities in affected areas, and a “WAR ZONE” environment in which our CHILDREN and elders are FORCED to survive in. A RECLASSIFICATION of these crimes and ALL involved in their OFFENSES to include all persons assisting in any CAPACITY as terrorists will, also, REMOVE many, but NOT all, of the OBSTRUCTIONS for our children as they LEARN, play, and grow during their crucial DEVELOPMENTAL YEARS by significantly REDUCING the VIOLENT CRIMES, eliminating FORCED gang membership, SIGNIFICANTLY reducing teen pregnancy, TEEN drug use, teen dropout rates, SCHOOL ABSENTEISM, illiteracy rates, TEEN SUICIDE RATES, as well as the eradicating of the PSYCHOLOGICAL TRAUMA as well as mental anguish that is PRODUCED by the “war zone” environment. The BY-PRODUCTS of this campaign include, but are not limited to significant REDUCTION in Medical budget expenditures CAUSED by drug related medical and traumatic CONDITIONS (DRUG OVERDOSES, HOMICIDES, SUICIDES, DRUG INFLUENCED/RELATED AUTO ACCIDENTS, DRUG INDUCED PSYCHOLOGICAL PATIENTS, BABIES BORN WITH DRUG ADDICTIONS, THE SPREAD OF SEXUALLY TRANSMITTED DISEASES, BABIES BORN WITH SEXUALLY TRANSMITTED DISEASES, TRAUMA RELATED TO DRUGS/GANGS AND VIOLENT CRIME, ETC.).”

(Excerpt from Quote Of The Week 01/01/12)

And our babies will continue to be oppressed until death and all day before they can live. This is not LOVE. This is HATE. Please, STOP!

Brought to you

By

The “From the dirt…” Community Redevelopment Project

A program of

COMMUNITY INTERNATIONAL

 

Tending The Garden; Plucking Poverty By The Roots

By Akil A. Bomani

The most severe form of poverty is ignorance; lack of knowledge or factual, true, and always objective information (as opposed to misinformation or ill knowledge). Only when we breathe, speak, and teach true knowledge to ourselves, each other, and especially to our youth will we begin the work of eradicating the overwhelming abundance of poverty from our minds, our bodies, and most importantly, our spirits; and thus, the world. This alone will heal all plagues, address every societal need, and end suffering the world over and forever. And what is knowledge without wisdom? Just look around you at our world today. Lack of wisdom is the second most severe form of poverty afflicting “Man”. Without wisdom, knowledge is just a loaded gun or an explosive device in the wrong hands. It is the obvious cure for the disease. And then, what will we do with ourselves?

 

Pedophiliac: The Grip Of Reality Reveals The One And Only Solution 

By Akil A. Bomani

Pedophiliac, Child molester, Child predator, Child sex slaver/trafficker, … In summarizing this…“issue”, what a complete contradiction of nature and even evolution; an abomination. And what an example to the youth of the world we have set in not only not putting an end to such atrocity everywhere it exists, but have allowed it to now be an accepted part of popular culture in some of our societies, continue in others as “tradition”, or incidents and perpetrators have become so common place that one can see them “coming out of the closet”. The damage they inflict on their victims, their victims’ family, friends, school mates, care providers, emergency response personnel, etc. go far beyond bad dreams. Our current problem is this; the DISEASE is spiritual and mental which leads to the actual physical act and crime and THERE IS NO CURE. And so, there is but ONE solution. No matter where you are, no matter your socio-politico, cultural, and/or economic back ground, only those with no reasoning will disagree. And so, no matter where you are…no matter what country, city, township, or village, ethnic group, cultural orientation, or other group, support the enacting and, most importantly, enforcement of internationally standardized laws that reflect and directly address this most serious matter. Until there is a cure, our children are not safe. Seek to initiate the passing of laws that PERMANENTLY remove offenders from society by penalties of either LIFE OF IMPRISONMENT/MENTAL INSTITUTION with NO CHANCE OF PAROLE or RELEASE until a cure is discovered or DEATH BY SOME LETHAL MECHANISM for all perpetrators of this most heinous assault on our youth. We must, also, in a formal setting, teach our youth from the early developmental stages “sex education”, the very best parenting practices among other essential “life skills”, and the need, how, and why to report offenders to assist with their protection and bringing perpetrators to justice. And we must, in a formal setting, teach current parents, educators, as well as all other care providers how to recognize a problem when they encounter it. Please, join this War on Pedophiliacs as we seek all progressive methods to “end this right now”. Why? Pedophiliacs CAN’T help themselves and the next child could be yours. Or how else will our children ever respect us again?

Brought to you by

 THE BOMANI GROUP

    

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

“The job of a revolutionary is, of course, to overthrow unjust systems and replace them with just systems because a revolutionary understands this can only be done by the masses of the people. So, the task of the revolutionary is to organize the masses of the people, given the conditions of the Africans around the world who are disorganized, consequently all my efforts are going to organizing people.”

Kwame Toure’ (Stokely Carmichael)

June 29, 1941 – November 15, 1998

A Trinidadian- African American political and community activist, Pan-Africanist, organizer, orator, and author. He rose to prominence first as a leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC, pronounced "snick") and later as the "Honorary Prime Minister" of the Black Panther Party. Initially an integrationist, Carmichael later became affiliated with Black Nationalist and Pan-Africanist movements. He is credited with popularizing the terms "Black Power" and “institutionalized racism”.

Kwame was arrested 36 times between 1964 and 1966 because of his work to register Africans in Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia, to vote. In June, 1966, Kwame defeated now USA Congressman John Lewis to become Chairperson of SNCC. Kwame's election as SNCC Chairperson signaled the growing militancy within SNCC, and the movement, and a desire on behalf of many in the membership to take a more militant and uncompromising stance on African liberation. During his tenure as Chairperson of SNCC, Kwame helped the organization develop into one of the most militant African organizations in the USA. SNCC became the first African American organization to come out against the Vietnam war. SNCC was also the first African American organization to take a position against the Zionist state of Israel.

In 1967, while still Chairperson of SNCC, in the height of the USA led imperialist war against Vietnam, Kwame had the privilege of going to Vietnam and visiting the Great Nguyen Al Thouc (Ho Chi Minh), the leader of the Vietnamese war resistance against American imperialism. It was during that visit when Kwame expressed his disillusionment with the direction of the struggle in the America, that Al Thouc told Kwame "why don't you go to Africa? It is your home." Taking Al Thouc's advice further, Kwame took up the offer made by Guinean (West African) President Sekou Ture made three years prior to a visiting SNCC delegation, to come to Guinea, stay, and help to build the African revolution. In 1968, Kwame moved to Guinea and began to live and study under Sekou Ture, and Kwame Nkrumah, the first president of Ghana who was overthrown in a central intelligence agency (CIA)-organized Coup in 1966. After the coup in Ghana, Ture invited Nkrumah to come to Guinea and become Co-President of Guinea. At that time, Guinea was struggling to build the Democratic Party of Guinea (PDG), as a mass, Pan-Africanist political party that would function as a base within West Africa in which to launch the Pan-African struggle to unite Africa under one continental, socialist, government (see Nkrumah; Handbook of Revolutionary Warfare pg. 56-59). Kwame Ture stayed in Guinea from 1968, until his death in 1998, working to bring about Pan-Africanism. He worked tirelessly to build the All African People's Revolutionary Party (A-APRP), which is the revolutionary Pan-Africanist political party that Nkrumah discussed in his handbook as the logical vehicle to bring about unity and socialism to Africa. In the Handbook, Nkrumah talked about the inability of the Organization of African Unity (OAU), which he founded, to bring about genuine African unity. He offered up the A-APRP, through it's organization of the All African Committee for Political Coordination (A-ACPC) as the vehicle to bring about true unity. The A-ACPC, unlike the OAU, would not depend on the governments to unite, but would instead unite the genuine African revolutionary political parties and movements under the direction and guidance of the A-APRP to bring about continental unification.

Kwame Ture spent 4 years at Howard, three years in SNCC, less than one year in the BPP, but thirty years in the A-APRP. He didn't run away, disappear, or become irrelevant after 1968, as the imperialists, and many so-called progressives and revolutionaries would have you believe. Instead he worked tirelessly to build the A-ACPC and the A-APRP. Today, five years after his physical transition, no one can deny the fruits of his work. The A-APRP, in its efforts to build the A-ACPC, has developed strong principled brother/sister relationships with the Democratic Party of Guinea, Pan-African Union of Sierra Leone, African Party for the Independence of Guinea-Bissau, Azanian People's Organization of Azania/South Africa, and Pan-Africanist Congress of Azania/South Africa, all of which consider themselves A-ACPC organizations as called for by Nkrumah. The A-APRP has organizers on the ground, openly integrated with the A-APRP and those respective parties and organizations in each of those countries, as well as Ghana, Senegal, The Gambia, Britain, Canada, Barbados, Virgin Islands, Brazil, and throughout the US. These organizers are working to build the A-ACPC which will serve as a worldwide fighting force of Pan-African revolutionaries who are dedicated to fighting US led imperialism to liberate Africa under one unified, socialist government. As Kwame Nkrumah and Sekou Ture predicted, once Africa is free, unified, and socialist, Africa, and Africans, wherever they live on the planet, will be empowered to make a proper forward contribution to all of human civilization.

Kwame Ture's life, from Civil Rights, to Black Power, forward to Pan-Africanism, is the logical forward progress of the international struggle of African people to achieve self-determination.

Early life and education

Born in Port of Spain, Trinidad, Stokely Carmichael moved to Harlem, New York City in 1952 at age eleven to rejoin his parents, who had left him with his grandmother and two aunts to immigrate when he was two. He attended the elite Tranquility School in Trinidad until his parents were able to send for him.

His mother, Mabel R. Carmichael, was a stewardess for a steamship line, and his father, Adolphus, was a carpenter who also worked as a taxi driver. The reunited Carmichael family eventually left Harlem to live in Morris Park in the East Bronx, at that time an aging Jewish and Italian neighborhood. According to a 1967 interview he gave to LIFE Magazine, he was the only African American member of the Morris Park Dukes, a youth gang involved in alcohol and petty theft.

He attended the Bronx High School of Science. In 1960, Carmichael went on to attend Howard University, a historically African American university in Washington, D.C.. His professors included Sterling Brown, Nathan Hare and Toni Morrison. Carmichael and a Caucasian American student and civil-rights activist, Tom Kahn, helped to fund a five-day run of the Three Penny Opera, by Berthold Brecht and Kurt Weill:

"Tom Kahn—very shrewdly—had captured the position of Treasurer of the Liberal Arts Student Council and the infinitely charismatic and popular Carmichael as floor whip was good at lining up the votes. Before they knew what hit them the Student Council had become a patron of the arts, having voted to buy out the remaining performances. It was a classic win/win. Members of the Council got patronage packets of tickets for distribution to friends and constituents".

His apartment on Euclid Street was a gathering place for his activist classmates. He graduated with a degree in philosophy in 1964. He was offered a full graduate scholarship to Harvard University, but turned it down.

He joined the Nonviolent Action Group (NAG), the Howard campus affiliate of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Tom Kahn introduced Carmichael and the other SNCC activists to Bayard Rustin, who became an influential adviser to SNCC. Carmichael became inspired by the sit-ins to become more active in the Civil Rights Movement. In his first year at the university, he participated in the Freedom Rides of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and was frequently arrested, spending time in jail. In 1961, he served 49 days at the infamous Parchman Farm in Sunflower County, Mississippi. He was arrested many times for his activism. He lost count of his many arrests, sometimes giving the estimate of at least 29 or 32, and telling the Washington Post in 1998 he believed that the total number was fewer than 36.

Freedom Rides

In his first year at the Howard University, the nineteen-year-old Carmichael participated in the Freedom Rides of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). Along with eight other riders, on June 4, 1961 Carmichael made the trip by train from New Orleans, LA to Jackson, MS. Before getting on the train in New Orleans, they encountered Caucasian American protestors blocking the way. Carmichael says that

“They were shouting. Throwing cans and lit cigarettes at us. Spitting on us.”.

Eventually, they were able to board the train.

When the group arrived in Jackson, Carmichael and the eight other riders entered a “white” cafeteria. They were charged with disturbing the peace, arrested and taken to jail. Eventually, Carmichael was transferred to Parchman State Prison Farm where he gained notoriety for being a witty and hard nosed leader among the prisoners.

At nineteen years old, Carmichael became the youngest detainee in the summer of 1961. He spent 53 days at Parchman Farm in

“a six-by-nine cell. Twice a week to shower. No books, nothing to do. They would isolate us. Maximum security”.

Carmichael said about the Parchman Farm sheriff that

“The sheriff acted like he was scared of black folks and he came up with some beautiful things. One night he opened up all the windows, put on ten big fans and an air conditioner and dropped the temperature to 38 degrees. All we had on was T-shirts and shorts”.

While being hurt one time, Carmichael began singing to the guards, “I’m gonna tell God how you treat me” to which the rest of the prisoners joined in.

Carmichael kept the group's morale up while in prison, often telling jokes with Steve Green and the other Freedom Riders, and making light of their situation. While he joked around quite a bit, Carmichael knew this was serious.

“What with the range of ideology, religious belief, political commitment and background, age, and experience, something interesting was always going on. Because no matter our differences, this group had one thing in common, moral stubbornness. Whatever we believed, we really believed and were not at all shy about advancing. We were where we were only because of our willingness to affirm our beliefs even at the risk of physical injury. So it was never dull on death row”.

SNCC

In 1965, working as a SNCC activist in Lowndes County, Alabama, Carmichael helped to increase the number of registered African American voters from 70 to 2,600 — 300 more than the number of registered Caucasian American voters. African American residents and voters organized and widely supported the Lowndes County Freedom Organization, a party that had the black panther as its mascot, over the Caucasian American dominated local Democratic Party, whose mascot was a white rooster. Although African American residents and voters outnumber Caucasian Americans in Lowndes, they lost the county wide election of 1965.

Carmichael became chairman of SNCC later in 1966, taking over from John Lewis. A few weeks after Carmichael took office, James Meredith was attacked with a shotgun during his solitary "March Against Fear". Carmichael joined Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Floyd McKissick, Cleveland Sellers and others to continue Meredith's march. He was arrested once again during the march and, upon his release, he gave his first "Black Power" speech, using the phrase to urge African American pride and socio-economic independence:

“It is a call for black people in this country to unite, to recognize their heritage, to build a sense of community. It is a call for black people to define their own goals, to lead their own organizations.       ”

While Black Power was not a new concept, Carmichael's speech brought it into the spotlight and it became a rallying cry for young African Americans across the country. Everywhere that Black Power spread, if accepted, credit was given to Carmichael. If the concept was condemned, he was again responsible and given the blame. According to Carmichael:

"Black Power meant black people coming together to form a political force and either electing representatives or forcing their representatives to speak their needs [rather than relying on established parties]".

Heavily influenced by the work of Frantz Fanon and his landmark book Wretched of the Earth, along with others such as Malcolm X, under Carmichael's leadership SNCC gradually became more radical and focused on Black Power as its core goal and ideology. This became most evident during the controversial Atlanta Project in 1966. SNCC, under the local leadership of Bill Ware, engaged in a voter drive to promote the candidacy of Julian Bond for the Georgia State Legislature in an Atlanta district. However, unlike previous SNCC activities — like the 1961 Freedom Rides or the 1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer — Ware excluded Northern Caucasian American SNCC members from the drive. Initially, Carmichael opposed this move and voted it down, but he eventually changed his mind. When, at the urging of the Atlanta Project, the issue of Caucasian Americans in SNCC came up for a vote, Carmichael ultimately sided with those calling for the expulsion of Caucasian Americans, reportedly to encourage Caucasian Americans to begin organizing poor Caucasian American southern communities while SNCC would continue to focus on promoting African American self reliance through Black Power.

Carmichael saw nonviolence as a tactic as opposed to a principle, which separated him from moderate civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King, Jr.. Carmichael became critical of civil rights leaders who simply called for the integration of African Americans into existing institutions of the middle class mainstream.

“Now, several people have been upset because we’ve said that integration was irrelevant when initiated by blacks, and that in fact it was a subterfuge, an insidious subterfuge, for the maintenance of white supremacy. Now we maintain that in the past six years or so, this country has been feeding us a "thalidomide drug of integration," and that some Negroes have been walking down a dream street talking about sitting next to white people; and that that does not begin to solve the problem; that when we went to Mississippi we did not go to sit next to Ross Barnett; we did not go to sit next to Jim Clark; we went to get them out of our way; and that people ought to understand that; that we were never fighting for the right to integrate, we were fighting against white supremacy. Now, then, in order to understand white supremacy we must dismiss the fallacious notion that white people can give anybody their freedom. No man can give anybody his freedom. A man is born free. You may enslave a man after he is born free, and that is in fact what this country does. It enslaves black people after they’re born, so that the only acts that white people can do is to stop denying black people their freedom; that is, they must stop denying freedom. They never give it to anyone.”

According to Bearing the Cross (1986), David J. Garrow's Pulitzer Prize winning book about the Civil Rights movement, a few days after Carmichael used the "Black Power" slogan at the "Meredith March Against Fear," he reportedly told King,

"Martin, I deliberately decided to raise this issue on the march in order to give it a national forum and force you to take a stand for Black Power."

King responded,

"I have been used before. One more time won't hurt."

In 1967, Carmichael stepped down as chairman of SNCC and was replaced by H. Rap Brown. The SNCC, which was a collective and, in keeping with the spirit of the times, worked by group consensus rather than hierarchically, was displeased with Carmichael's celebrity status. SNCC leaders had begun to refer to him as "Stokely Starmichael" and criticize his habit of making policy announcements independently, before achieving internal agreement, and gave him a formal letter of expulsion in 1967. There is some speculation around Carmichael’s reasoning for stepping down from the chairman position of SNCC. According to his personal narratives, Carmichael witnessed African American demonstrators being beaten and shocked with cattle prods by the police. Witnessing the helplessness of people so fully committed to the non-violent approach gave Carmichael a new perspective, one which condoned the use of violent techniques against the brutality of the racist police force. Carmichael’s new tactics sought to reciprocate the fear instilled in African Americans by the police force, which led to the creation of the militant social group known as “The Black Panthers.”

Politics after SNCC

After his time with the SNCC, Carmichael attempted to clarify his politics by writing the book Black Power (1967) with Charles V. Hamilton and became a strong critic of the Vietnam War. During this period he traveled and lectured extensively throughout the world; visiting Guinea, North Vietnam, China, and Cuba. After his expulsion from the SNCC, Carmichael became more clearly identified with the Black Panther Party as its "Honorary Prime Minister." During this period he became more of a speaker than an organizer, traveling throughout the country and internationally advocating for his vision of Black Power.

Carmichael also lamented the 1967 execution of Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara, professing:

“The death of Che Guevara places a responsibility on all revolutionaries of the World to redouble their decision to fight on to the final defeat of Imperialism. That is why in essence Che Guevara is not dead, his ideas are with us.”

Vietnam

Carmichael joined Martin Luther King Jr. in New York on April 15, 1967 to share his views with protesters on race in terms of the war in Vietnam.

“The draft exemplifies as much as racism the totalitarianism which prevails in this nation in the disguise of consensus democracy. The President has conducted war in Vietnam without the consent of Congress or the American people, without the consent of anybody except maybe Lady Bird.”

1968 D.C. riots

Carmichael was present in D.C. the night after King's assassination. He led a group through the streets, demanding that businesses close out of respect. Although he tried to prevent violence from breaking out, the situation eventually escalated beyond his control. Due to Carmichael's reputation as a provocateur, the news media blamed him for the ensuing violence.

Carmichael did host an incendiary press conference the next day, predicting mass racial violence in the streets.

Surveillance by the FBI

After moving to Washington, D.C., Carmichael was under nearly constant surveillance by the FBI. After the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., Hoover instructed a team of agents to find evidence connecting Carmichael to the rioting. A 1968 memo from Hoover suggests fears that Carmichael would become a Black Nationalist "messiah".

Self-imposed exile

However, Carmichael soon began to distance himself from the Panthers. The Panthers and Carmichael disagreed on whether Caucasian American activists should be allowed to help the Panthers. The Panthers believed that Caucasian American activists could help the movement, while Carmichael thought as Malcolm X, saying that the Caucasian American activists needed to organize their own communities first. In 1969, he and his then-wife, the South African singer Miriam Makeba, moved to Guinea-Conakry where he became an aide to Guinean prime minister Ahmed Sékou Touré and the student of exiled Ghanaian President Kwame Nkrumah. Makeba was appointed Guinea's official delegate to the United Nations. Three months after his arrival in Guinea, in July 1969, he published a formal rejection of the Black Panthers, condemning the Panthers for not being separatist enough and their "dogmatic party line favoring alliances with white radicals".

It was at this stage in his life that Carmichael changed his name to Kwame Ture to honor the African leaders Nkrumah and Touré who had become his patrons. At the end of his life, friends still referred to him interchangeably by both names, "and he doesn't seem to mind."

Carmichael remained in Guinea after separation from the Black Panther Party. He continued to travel, write, and speak out in support of international leftist movements and in 1971 collected his work in a second book Stokely Speaks: Black Power Back to Pan-Africanism. This book expounds an explicitly socialist, Pan-African vision, which he seemingly retained for the rest of his life. From the late 1970s until the day he died, he answered his phone by announcing "Ready for the revolution!"

While in Guinea, he was arrested one more time. Two years after Touré's death in 1984, the military regime which took his place arrested Carmichael and jailed him for three days on suspicion of attempting to overthrow the government. Despite common knowledge that President Touré engaged in torture of his political opponents, Carmichael had never criticized his namesake.

Carmichael and Makeba separated in 1973. After they divorced, he entered a second marriage with Marlyatou Barry, a Guinean doctor whom he also divorced. By 1998, his second wife and their son, Bokar, born in 1982, were living in Arlington County, Virginia. Relying on a statement from the All-African Peoples Revolutionary Party, his 1998 obituary in The New York Times referenced two sons, three sisters, and his mother as survivors, but without further details.

Death

After two years of treatment at the Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in New York, he died of prostate cancer at the age of 57 in Conakry, Guinea. He claimed that his cancer

"was given to me by forces of American imperialism and others who conspired with them."

He claimed that the FBI had introduced the cancer to his body as an attempt at assassination. After his diagnosis in 1996, he was treated in Cuba for his illness while receiving money from the Nation of Islam. Benefit concerts were held in Denver; New York; Atlanta; and Washington, D.C., to help defray his medical expenses; and the government of Trinidad and Tobago, where he was born, awarded him a grant of $1,000 a month for the same purpose.

In 2007, the publication of previously secret Central Intelligence Agency documents revealed that Carmichael had been tracked by the CIA as part of their surveillance of African American activists abroad, which began in 1968 and continued for years.

In a final interview given to the Washington Post, he spoke with contempt for the economic and electoral progress made during the past thirty years. He acknowledged that African Americans had won election to major mayorships, but stated that the power of mayoralty had been diminished and that such progress was essentially meaningless.

Stokely Carmichael, along with Charles Hamilton, are credited with coining the phrase "institutional racism", which is defined as a form of racism that occurs through institutions such as public bodies and corporations, including universities. In the late 1960s Carmichael defined "institutional racism" as

"the collective failure of an organization to provide an appropriate and professional service to people because of their color, culture or ethnic origin".

Civil rights leader Jesse Jackson gave a speech celebrating Carmichael's life, stating:

"He was one of our generation who was determined to give his life to transforming America and Africa. He was committed to ending racial apartheid in our country. He helped to bring those walls down".

He should be remembered, as Rev. Jesse Jackson described him in 1998, as "a man who never made peace with capitalism, racism, and amerikkkan policy."

In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed Stokely Carmichael on his list of 100 Greatest African Americans.

Legacy:

- Contributions to the A-APRP which include actualizing a genuine international Pan-African political party, based in Africa.

- Contributing towards developing true principled relationships with< non-African revolutionaries such as

-the Palestine Liberation Organization,

-Irish Republican Socialist Party, International Indian Treaty

-Council/American Indian Movement.

- Contribution towards institutionalizing African Liberation Day as an international Pan-Africanist day of protest and unity throughout the world.

- Contributions towards developing and building an African United Front in USA between groups as far apart ideologically as the NAACP, Urban League, Nation of Islam, Republic of New Afrika, and A-APRP.

Books

Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America

Stokely Speaks: Black Power Back to Pan-Africanism

By Wikipedia and www.thetalkingdrum.com

 

Born and raised on the Southside of the music city of Memphis, Tenn., the artist simply called, “George", is Stone Records' smooth jazz male vocalist, songwriter, and producer. This new comer with the rich voice texture and soulful crooning will soon earn his place among male balladeers within the music industry with his soothing and melodic vocal interpretations. A multitalented and very versatile vocalist, songwriter, and producer, but very humble spirit, "George", is destined to become a contributor to the long musical legacy of Memphis with his brand of music.

Though influenced by a wide variety of world class vocalists, songwriters, and producers, George is all original in his presentations of what music is; smooth, soulful, sultry, sexy crooning, and melodically interpretive balladry…

"Volume I George", will be an invitation for the listener into a relaxing mood, regardless of your day, with a jazz so smooth, it’s therapeutic. Just listen…There is not a song without a message as "George" enters the industry with "…music for the soul" as his purpose. This is poetry. The look, the voice, his music, the vibe…feel it.

Have a taste at

Reverbnation.com/Georgethesmoothandsexycrooner

and pick up the debut single,

“I Want To Know”

from

“Volume I George”

when it drops!

“Taste my funk (smile).”

George

Follow George on Twitter:

George

@George_StoneRec

 "Strictly business for serious business minds…".

 

BOOK Of THE MONTH

“Yi Jin Jing”

Compiled By The Chinese Health Qigong Association

ISBN-10: 1848190085

MARY & MODINE'S MUSIC SHOP (BMI) 

Whether it’s Soul Contemporary Gospel, Smooth Jazz, Love Ballads, Commercial Jingles, Sound Tracks…

“…we’ve got that song you were looking for”

 

IT’S YOUR HEALTH

Sewage Waste Energy

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The concept of turning sewage waste from humans into energy is a new one. For years, sewage has been turned into fertilizer, but it is only recently that leaders in the field have made progress in creating energy. The benefits of turning sewage waste into energy are monetary as well as environmental. The use of these biofuels cuts the number of greenhouse gases polluting the air.

Contents

1 History

2 Conventional waste disposal

3 Sewage-to-energy

4 Emerging technology

5 Companies focused on sewage waste energy

6 Economics

7 Challenges

History

A town in Spain, Chiclana de la Frontera, contains the world’s first plant that converts sewage into energy. The wastewater plant produces algae-based biofuel. The ability of microbes to produce electricity has been known for decades now, but only recent technological advances have made their commercial production possible. Some places, like the European Union, have recently passed a Renewable Energy Directive to encourage an increase in transport biofuels from 2.4% to 10% by 2020.

Conventional waste disposal

Converting wastewater into energy is typically accomplished through anaerobic digesters, which collect methane, or biogas, and produce energy through a combustion reaction. These anaerobic digesters are high-energy intensive and therefore produce less energy than the new technologies that have started to emerge. The conventional methods of waste disposal create 7 million tons of dry biosolid per year, which is usually dumped into landfills or turned into mulch. The wastewater that is able to be purified often still contains pharmaceutical drugs because they are water-soluble and difficult to extract.

Sewage-to-energy

Recent technological advances have so far proved that sewage can be turned into electrical power and transportation fuel. The extent of this power, however, is yet undetermined. In order to understand how sewage can be used as an energy source, one must understand the chemical process involved. Bacteria is a big part of this process. Bacteria use sewage to drive chemical reactions that produce an electrical current and thus, energy. Bacteria naturally generate electrons as they break down organic materials, such as sewage. These electrons can then be used by microbial cells to create an electrical current. Sewage that is treated in this way can produce large amounts of electricity and can also purify the wastewater that is used in the process. Another process for creating energy from the waste is to run electrical current through the sewage. This creates vapor which, once captured and condensed, is a No. 2 diesel fuel. This fuel can be burned like other fuels to create energy. One great advantage to this method of energy harvesting is that there are no toxic byproducts.

Emerging technology

An important technological development that has arisen with the advancements made in sewage waste energy is the tri-generation system. This three-part system uses sewage to produce heat, electricity, and hydrogen. The tri-generation system is currently in use by a leading company in the sewage waste energy field, FuelCell Energy Inc. located in California. This company also uses another important technology that has recently emerged called microbial fuel cells. Fuel cells in general produce electricity through chemical reactions involving hydrogen ions. Microbial fuel cells make energy in a process similar to that of hydrogen fuel cells, except for the fact that it runs of wastewater.

Companies focused on sewage waste energy

?      All-Gas (Chicano de la Frontera, Spain)

?      AquaCritox (Cork, Ireland)

?      Bauhaus University, Weimar (Germany)

?      BioConversion Solutions (Illinois, USA)

?      BlackGold Biofuels (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA)

?      Chemergy Inc (Florida, USA)

?      Earth, Wind & Fire (Florida, USA)

?      EnerTech (Atlanta, Georgia, USA)

?      FuelCell Energy Inc. (L.A., California, USA)

?      Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

?      Veolia Water Solutions & Technologies

?      Weltec Biopower (Germany)

Economics

Treatment of wastewater could be a great energy producer, not energy cost. Some benefits include saving money, better water treatment, and promoting energy sustainability. Construction costs of this new technology could even be less expensive than the activated sludge systems that are currently in use.

Challenges

Most of this technology, such as microbial fuel cells, is still in early development stages. Other challenges include how to generate enough energy to offset the costs of running a sewage treatment plant as well as how to create bigger, more effective microbial fuel cells that can generate more energy for large-scale commercial use. The storage of waste in homes before its collection may also lead to problems.

 

Waste-To-Energy

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Waste-to-energy (WtE) or energy-from-waste (EfW) is the process of generating energy in the form of electricity and/or heat from the primary treatment of waste. WtE is a form of energy recovery. Most WtE processes produce electricity and/or heat directly through combustion, or produce a combustible fuel commodity, such as methane, methanol, ethanol or synthetic fuels.

Contents

1 History

2 Incineration

3 WtE technologies other than incineration

4 Global WtE developments

5 Carbon dioxide emissions

5.1 Determination of the biomass fraction

6 Examples of waste-to-energy plants

7 See also

History

The first incinerator or "Destructor" was built in Nottingham UK in 1874 by Manlove, Alliott & Co. Ltd. to the design of Albert Fryer.

The first US incinerator was built in 1885 on Governors Island in New York, New York.

The first waste incinerator in Denmark was built in 1903 in Frederiksberg

The first facility in the Czech Republic was built in 1905 in Brno.

Incineration

Incineration, the combustion of organic material such as waste with energy recovery, is the most common WtE implementation. All new WtE plants in OECD countries incinerating waste (residual MSW, commercial, industrial or RDF) must meet strict emission standards, including those on nitrogen oxides (NOx), sulphur dioxide (SO2), heavy metals and dioxins. Hence, modern incineration plants are vastly different from old types, some of which neither recovered energy nor materials. Modern incinerators reduce the volume of the original waste by 95-96 percent, depending upon composition and degree of recovery of materials such as metals from the ash for recycling.

Incinerators may emit fine particulate, heavy metals, trace dioxin and acid gas, even though these emissions are relatively low from modern incinerators. Other concerns include proper management of residues: toxic fly ash, which must be handled in hazardous waste disposal installation as well as incinerator bottom ash (IBA), which must be reused properly.

Critics argue that incinerators destroy valuable resources and they may reduce incentives for recycling. The question, however, is an open one, as countries in Europe recycling the most (up to 70%) also incinerate their residual waste to avoid landfilling.

Incinerators have electric efficiencies of 14-28%. In order to avoid losing the rest of the energy, it can be used for e.g. district heating (cogeneration). The total efficiencies of cogeneration incinerators are typically higher than 80% (based on the lower heating value of the waste).

The method of using incineration to convert municipal solid waste (MSW) to energy is a relatively old method of WtE production. Incineration generally entails burning waste (residual MSW, commercial, industrial and RDF) to boil water which powers steam generators that make electric energy and heat to be used in homes, businesses, institutions and industries. One problem associated with incinerating MSW to make electrical energy is the potential for pollutants to enter the atmosphere with the flue gases from the boiler. These pollutants can be acidic and in the 1980s were reported to cause environmental damage by turning rain into acid rain. Since then, the industry has removed this problem by the use of lime scrubbers and electro-static precipitators on smokestacks. By passing the smoke through the basic lime scrubbers, any acids that might be in the smoke are neutralized which prevents the acid from reaching the atmosphere and hurting the environment. Many other devices, such as fabric filters, reactors, and catalysts destroy or capture other regulated pollutants. According to the New York Times, modern incineration plants are so clean that "many times more dioxin is now released from home fireplaces and backyard barbecues than from incineration. " According to the German Environmental Ministry, "because of stringent regulations, waste incineration plants are no longer significant in terms of emissions of dioxins, dust, and heavy metals".

WtE technologies other than incineration

There are a number of other new and emerging technologies that are able to produce energy from waste and other fuels without direct combustion. Many of these technologies have the potential to produce more electric power from the same amount of fuel than would be possible by direct combustion. This is mainly due to the separation of corrosive components (ash) from the converted fuel, thereby allowing higher combustion temperatures in e.g. boilers, gas turbines, internal combustion engines, fuel cells. Some are able to efficiently convert the energy into liquid or gaseous fuels:

Thermal technologies:

?      Gasification: produces combustible gas, hydrogen, synthetic fuels

?      Thermal depolymerization: produces synthetic crude oil, which can be further refined

?      Pyrolysis: produces combustible tar/biooil and chars

?      Plasma arc gasification or plasma gasification process (PGP): produces rich syngas including hydrogen and carbon monoxide usable for fuel cells or generating electricity to drive the plasma arch, usable vitrified silicate and metal ingots, salt and sulphur

Non-thermal technologies:

?      Anaerobic digestion: Biogas rich in methane

?      Fermentation production: examples are ethanol, lactic acid, hydrogen

?      Mechanical biological treatment (MBT)

o      MBT + Anaerobic digestion

o      MBT to Refuse derived fuel

Global WtE developments

During the 2001–2007 period, the WtE capacity increased by about four million metric tons per annum. Japan and China each built several plants that were based on direct smelting or on fluidized bed combustion of solid waste. In China there are about 434 WtE plants in early 2016. Japan is the largest user in thermal treatment of MSW in the world with 40 million tons. Some of the newest plants use stoker technology and others use the advanced oxygen enrichment technology. There are also over one hundred thermal treatment plants using relatively novel processes such as direct smelting, the Ebara fluidization process and the Thermo- select -JFE gasification and melting technology process. In Patras, Greece, a Greek company just finished testing a system that shows potential. It generates 25kwatts of electricity and 25kwatts of heat from waste water. In India its first energy bio-science center was developed to reduce the country’s green house gases and its dependency on fossil fuel. As of June 2014, Indonesia had a total of 93.5MW installed capacity of WtE, with a pipeline of projects in different preparation phases together amounting to another 373MW of capacity.

Biofuel Energy Corporation of Denver, CO, opened two new biofuel plants in Wood River, Nebraska, and Fairmont, Minnesota, in July 2008. These plants use distillation to make ethanol for use in motor vehicles and other engines. Both plants are currently reported to be working at over 90% capacity. Fulcrum BioEnergy incorporated located in Pleasanton, California, is building a WtE plant near Reno, NV. The plant is scheduled to open in 2019 under the name of Sierra BioFuels plant. BioEnergy incorporated predicts that the plant will produce approximately 10.5 million gallons per year of ethanol from nearly 200,000 tons per year of MSW.

Waste to energy technology includes fermentation, which can take biomass and create ethanol, using waste cellulosic or organic material. In the fermentation process, the sugar in the waste is changed to carbon dioxide and alcohol, in the same general process that is used to make wine. Normally fermentation occurs with no air present. Esterification can also be done using waste to energy technologies, and the result of this process is biodiesel. The cost effectiveness of esterification will depend on the feedstock being used, and all the other relevant factors such as transportation distance, amount of oil present in the feedstock, and others. Gasification and pyrolysis by now can reach gross thermal conversion efficiencies (fuel to gas) up to 75%, however a complete combustion is superior in terms of fuel conversion efficiency. Some pyrolysis processes need an outside heat source which may be supplied by the gasification process, making the combined process self-sustaining.

Carbon dioxide emissions

In thermal WtE technologies, nearly all of the carbon content in the waste is emitted as carbon dioxide (CO2) to the atmosphere (when including final combustion of the products from pyrolysis and gasification; except when producing bio-char for fertilizer). Municipal solid waste (MSW) contain approximately the same mass fraction of carbon as CO2 itself (27%), so treatment of 1 metric ton (1.1 short tons) of MSW produce approximately 1 metric ton (1.1 short tons) of CO2.

In the event that the waste was landfilled, 1 metric ton (1.1 short tons) of MSW would produce approximately 62 cubic metres (2,200 cu ft) methane via the anaerobic decomposition of the biodegradable part of the waste. This amount of methane has more than twice the global warming potential than the 1 metric ton (1.1 short tons) of CO2, which would have been produced by combustion. In some countries, large amounts of landfill gas are collected, but still the global warming potential of the landfill gas emitted to atmosphere in e.g. the US in 1999 was approximately 32% higher than the amount of CO2 that would have been emitted by combustion.

In addition, nearly all biodegradable waste is biomass. That is, it has biological origin. This material has been formed by plants using atmospheric CO2 typically within the last growing season. If these plants are regrown the CO2 emitted from their combustion will be taken out from the atmosphere once more.

Such considerations are the main reason why several countries administrate WtE of the biomass part of waste as renewable energy. The rest—mainly plastics and other oil and gas derived products—is generally treated as non-renewables.

Determination of the biomass fraction

MSW to a large extent is of biological origin (biogenic), e.g. paper, cardboard, wood, cloth, food scraps. Typically half of the energy content in MSW is from biogenic material. Consequently, this energy is often recognized as renewable energy according to the waste input.

Several methods have been developed by the European CEN 343 working group to determine the biomass fraction of waste fuels, such as Refuse Derived Fuel/Solid Recovered Fuel. The initial two methods developed (CEN/TS 15440) were the manual sorting method and the selective dissolution method. A detailed systematic comparison of these two methods was published in 2010. Since each method suffered from limitations in properly characterizing the biomass fraction, two alternative methods have been developed.

The first method uses the principles of radiocarbon dating. A technical review (CEN/TR 15591:2007) outlining the carbon 14 method was published in 2007. A technical standard of the carbon dating method (CEN/TS 15747:2008) will be published in 2008. In the United States, there is already an equivalent carbon 14 method under the standard method ASTM D6866.

The second method (so-called balance method) employs existing data on materials composition and operating conditions of the WtE plant and calculates the most probable result based on a mathematical-statistical model. Currently the balance method is installed at three Austrian and eight Danish incinerators.

A comparison between both methods carried out at three full-scale incinerators in Switzerland showed that both methods came to the same results.

Carbon 14 dating can determine with precision the biomass fraction of waste, and also determine the biomass calorific value. Determining the calorific value is important for green certificate programs such as the Renewable Obligation Certificate program in the United Kingdom. These programs award certificates based on the energy produced from biomass. Several research papers, including the one commissioned by the Renewable Energy Association in the UK, have been published that demonstrate how the carbon 14 result can be used to calculate the biomass calorific value. The UK gas and electricity markets authority, Ofgem, released a statement in 2011 accepting the use of Carbon 14 as a way to determine the biomass energy content of waste feedstock under their administration of the Renewables Obligation. Their Fuel Measurement and Sampling (FMS) questionnaire describes the information they look for when considering such proposals.

Examples of waste-to-energy plants]

According to ISWA there are 431 WtE plants in Europe (2005) and 89 in the United States (2004). The following are some examples of WtE plants.

Waste incineration WtE plants

?      Essex County Resource Recovery Facility, Newark, New Jersey

?      Lee County Solid Waste Resource Recovery Facility, Fort Myers, Florida, USA (1994)

?      Montgomery County Resource Recovery Facility in Dickerson, Maryland, USA (1995)

?      Spittelau (1971), and Fl?tzersteig (1963), Vienna, Austria (Wien Energie)

?      SYSAV waste-to-energy plant in Malm? (2003 and 2008), Sweden

?      Algonquin Power, Brampton, Ontario, Canada

?      Stoke Incinerator, Stoke-on-Trent, UK (1989)

?      Teesside EfW plant near Middlesbrough, North East England (1998)

?      Edmonton Incinerator in Greater London, England (1974)

?      Burnaby Waste-to-Energy Facility, Metro Vancouver, Canada (1988)

?      Timarpur-Okhla Waste to Energy Plant, New Delhi, India

Liquid fuel producing plants

A single plant is currently under construction. None are yet in commercial operation:

?      Edmonton Waste-to-ethanol Facility located in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada based on the Enerkem-process, fueled by RDF. Initially scheduled for completion during 2010 commissioning of front-end systems commenced December 2013 and Enerkem then expected initial methanol production during 2014. Production start has been delayed several times. As of spring 2016 Enerkem expected ethanol production to commence some time ín 2017, and no public confirmation of any actual RDF processing was available.

Plasma Gasification Waste-to-Energy plants

Main article: Plasma gasification commercialization

?      The US Air Force once tested a Transportable Plasma Waste to Energy System (TPWES) facility (PyroGenesis technology) at Hurlburt Field, Florida. The plant, which cost $7.4 million to construct, was closed and sold at a government liquidation auction in May 2013, less than three years after its commissioning. The opening bid was $25. The winning bid was sealed.

Besides large plants, domestic waste-to-energy incinerators also exist. For example, the refuge de Sarenne has a domestic waste-to-energy plant. It is made by combining a wood-fired gasification boiler with a Stirling motor.

See also

?       Energy portal

?      Biohydrogen production

?      Biomass

?      Cogeneration

?      Energy recycling

?      Landfill gas utilization

?      List of solid waste treatment technologies

?      List of waste management acronyms

?      Manure-derived synthetic crude oil

?      Refuse-derived fuel

?      Relative cost of electricity generated by different sources

?      Waste-to-energy plant

 

HISTORICAL FACT OF THE WEEK

History Of Trinidad & Tobago and Afro-Trinidadians and Tobagonians

“A Middle Passage And Of The People Of The Many Descendants Of Afrika”

Trinidad (Spanish: "Trinity") is the larger and more populous of the two major islands and numerous landforms which make up the island nation of Trinidad and Tobago. It is the southernmost island in the Caribbean and lies just 11 km (6.8 mi) off the northeastern coast of Venezuela. With an area of 4,768 km2 (1,841 sq mi) it is also the fifth largest in the West Indies.

Many believe the original name for the island in the Arawaks' language was "I?re" which meant "Land of the Humming Bird". Although there are indeed many hummingbird species in Trinidad and these birds might have had some spiritual significance to native peoples, some believe that "Iere" was actually a mispronunciation/corruption by early colonists of the Arawak work "Kairi" which simply means "Island" (which might make sense given that for mainland-based Arawak groups, Trinidad would simply have been seen as the largest nearby island). Christopher Columbus renamed it "La Isla de la Trinidad" ("The Island of the Trinity"), fulfilling a vow he had made before setting out on his third voyage of exploration.

As with all of the “discoveries” of Christopher Columbus, Caribs and Arawaks lived in Trinidad long before Columbus encountered the islands on his third voyage in 1498. Tobago changed hands between the British, French, Dutch and Courlanders, but eventually ended up in British hands. Trinidad remained Spanish until 1797, but it was largely settled by French colonists. In 1889 the two islands became a single crown colony. Trinidad and Tobago obtained self-governance in 1958 and independence from the British Empire in 1962.

Major landforms include the hills of the Northern, Central and Southern Ranges (Dinah ranges), the Caroni, Nariva and Oropouche Swamps, and the Caroni and Naparima Plains. Major river systems include the Caroni, North and South Oropouche and Ortoire Rivers. There are many other natural landforms such as beaches and waterfalls. Trinidad has two seasons per calendar year, the rainy season and the dry season.

Afro-Trinidadians and Tobagonians (or just Afro-Trinbagonians) are people from Trinidad and Tobago who are largely of African descent. Social interpretations of race in Trinidad and Tobago are often used to dictate who is of African descent; for example, a person might appear "white" in appearance but may still be considered "black" based on significant African ancestry. Mulatto-Creole, Zambo, Quadroon, or Octoroon were all racial terms used to measure the amount of African ancestry someone possessed in Trinidad and throughout Latin American and Caribbean history.

It is reported that Afro-Trinidadians and Tobagonians accounted for 35.4 per cent of the population of Trinidad and Tobago according to the 2011 Census. However, the classification is primarily a superficial description based on phenotypical (physical) description opposed to genotypical (genetic) classification. It is not uncommon for Trinidadians of both Indian and African descent to be considered Afro-Trinidadian solely based on appearance. An additional 22.8 per cent of Trinidadians described themselves as being multiracial, of whom 7.7 per cent were Dougla (mixed African and Indian ethnicity). A total of the reported 2011 Census and the self-described multiracial Trinidadians of African ancestry comes to a sum of 65.9 percent which is similar to other Caribbean Island countries demographics.

The islands of Trinidad and Tobago (united in 1888) have a different racial history. The island of Trinidad is mainly multiracial while the population of Tobago is primarily what is considered Afro-Tobagonian, which is synonymous with Afro-Trinidadian, with the exception that the people of Tobago are almost exclusively of direct African ancestry. In an effort to unite the cultural and ethnic divide between the two islands many people choose to be called Trinbagonians as a sign of unity.

African ethnicities over 500 in Trinidad (1813)

Igbo 2,863

Kongo 2,450

Moko (Ibibio) 2,240

Malinké 1,421

Total Africans 13,984

Origins of Creoles over 400 in Trinidad (1813)

Trinidad 7,088

Martinique 962

Grenada 746

Saint Vincent 438

Guadeloupe 428

Total Creoles 11,633

The ultimate origin of most African ancestry in the Americas is in West and Central Africa. The most common ethnic groups of the enslaved Africans in Trinidad and Tobago were Igbo, Kongo and Malinke people. All of these groups, among others, were heavily affected by the Atlantic slave trade. The population census of 1813 shows that among African-born slaves the Igbo were the most numerous.

Around half of Afro-Trinidadians were the descendants of emigrants from other islands of the Caribbean, especially Martinique, Guadeloupe, Dominica and Grenada. Other Afro-Trinidadians trace their ancestry to American slaves recruited to fight for the British in the War of 1812 or from indentured laborers from West Africa.

Human settlement in Trinidad dates back at least 7,000 years. The earliest settlers, termed Archaic or Ortoiroid, are believed to have settled Trinidad and Tobago from northeastern South America around 4000 BC. Twenty-nine Archaic sites have been identified, mostly in south Trinidad and Tobago; this includes the 7,000-year-old Banwari Trace site which is the oldest discovered human settlement in the eastern Caribbean. Archaic populations were pre-ceramic, and dominated the area until about 200 BC.

Around 250 BC the first ceramic-using people in the Caribbean, the Saladoid people, entered Trinidad and Tobago. Earliest evidence of these people come from around 2100 BC along the banks of the Orinoco River in Venezuela. From Trinidad and Tobago, they are believed to have moved north into the remaining islands of the Caribbean. Thirty-seven Saladoid sites have been identified in Trinidad and Tobago, and are located all over the island.

After 250 AD a third group, called the Barrancoid people settled in southern Trinidad and Tobago after migrating up the Orinoco River toward the sea. The oldest Barrancoid settlement appears to have been at Erin, on the south coast.

Following the collapse of Barrancoid communities along the Orinoco around 650 AD, a new group, called the Arauquinoid expanded up the river to the coast. The cultural artifacts of this group were only partly adopted in Trinidad and Tobago and adjacent areas of northeast Venezuela, and as a result this culture is called Guayabitoid in these areas.

Around 1300 AD a new group appears to have settled in Trinidad and Tobago and introduced new cultural attributes which largely replaced the Guayabitoid culture. Termed the Mayoid cultural tradition, this represents the native tribes which were present in Trinidad and Tobago at the time of European arrival. Their distinct pottery and artifacts survive until 1800, but after this time they were largely assimilated into mainstream Trinidad and Tobago society. These included the Nepoya and Suppoya (who were probably Arawak-speaking) and the Yao (who were probably Carib-speaking). They have generally been called Arawaks and Caribs. These were largely wiped out by the Spanish colonizers under the encomienda system. Under this system which was basically a form of slavery, Spanish encomederos forced the Amerindians to work for them in exchange for Spanish "protection" and conversion to Christianity. The survivors were first organized into Missions by the Capuchin friars, and then gradually assimilated. The oldest organized indigenous group in Trinidad and Tobago is the Santa Rosa Carib Community centered in the town of Arima, although several new groups have developed in recent years.

The first contact with Europeans, occurred when Christopher Columbus, on his third voyage of exploration, arrived with his fleet of three small ships – the 100-ton Santa María and two caravels, El Correo and La Vaquenos – on 31 July 1498. Chriistopher Columbus landed on the island of Trinidad, where he encountered the indigenous Taino people (Arawakan) and the Kalinagos (Cariban).

Columbus is reported to have promised to name the next land he discovered for the Trinity|Holy Trinity, and considered it a miracle when the first land he sighted was the three peaks of the Trinity Hills. They anchored the next morning (1 August) at Point Erin, after sailing some way along the south coast of Trinidad and Tobago. They were relieved to find plentiful supplies of fresh water there as they had been rationing water and the flagship was using its last cask. The men enjoyed bathing, washing their clothes and relaxing, but saw no sign of other humans.

On their way along the south coast, they noticed a few thatched huts and, on 2 August, they rounded Icacos Point and anchored in the Gulf of Paria, where they spent two days relaxing.

Land was sighted to the southwest which Columbus thought was another island but in fact was Punto Bombeador on the mainland of the Orinoco Delta, in what is now Venezuela. On 4 August they prepared to sail up the Gulf. The anchor cable of the Vaquenos snapped and the anchor was lost. A bronze anchor was found near here in 1877 and is thought to be the anchor of the Vaquenos. It is now in the Victoria Institute in Port of Spain.

They then explored some of the Venezuelan coast as far as Rio Grande and the channels between the islands at the northern end of the Gulf, including the Serpent's Mouth. On 12 August they anchored at Monkey Harbor on Chacachacare Island. Early on 13 August they sailed through the Grand Boca and claimed the island of Trinidad and Tobago for Spain.

After land of Trinidad and Tobago was claimed, Columbus moved further down the coast to what is now the tip Venezuela. Columbus and his men relaxed for two more days then returning to Spain.

(Continued)

 

“...the truth shall set you free”

(Email [email protected] to get “plugged in”!)

 COMMENTARY

BY

Coming soon!!

URBAN COMMUNITY ECONOMIC RECOVERY, REDEVELOPMENT, & MANAGEMENT TRAINING PROGRAM

Complete with lectures, workshops, Power Point Presentations, resource acquisition and allocation management, progressive community activism training, progressive youth developmental programs, progressive business plan development programs, crime suppression program development, administration management, and lots of other “goodies” for you…

…find your community leader and let them know to “get on board this train”.

Brought to you By

“Get Your Mind Right” Productions

A Company of

 Orji

Please, email [email protected] for all inquiries

"Strictly business for serious business minds…"

  

It Is On!!!

Email George at [email protected] and get

“PLUGGED IN”

To “Stepping Stones”,

Relevant and insightful commentaries of today’s “real world” issues,

Upcoming performances and releases by Stone Records’ artist(s), the latest news and events…

Join the fan list at Reverbnation.com/georgethesmoothandsexycrooner

Where you may also

PICKUP THE COMING HOT NEW SINGLE,

“I Want To Know”

As well as “To Love And Be Loved”, “Let’s Take Our Time”, “A Friend In You”, “Believe in You” as well as several others on the release of the long anticipated debut album,

“Volume I George”

By the soulfully sultry and smooth balladeer,

George

Spring 2017!!

“The Memphis Step”

the debut single from the album,

“Summertime”

Also, “Summertime”, “Early Morning”, “Love In Thunder”, “Monday Hustle”, and others

by Stone Records acid/contemporary jazz group,

Ade

plus several contemporary soul gospel, hip hop, and urban projects beginning in 2017!! Stone Records is “…music for the soul” and we have come to get it on, baby!!

 

Join the email lists:

Twitter @George_StoneRec

YouTube.com/George The Balladeer

Facebook.com/George the balladeer

Reverbnation.com/Georgethesmoothandsexycrooner

To remove your name from our mailing list, please click here. Questions or comments? E-mail us at [email protected] with your comments, concerns, and/or suggestions. Thank you.