Caribbean tourist destinations like Tobago may suffer under the new tax code targeting credit card companies. (Google Images)
Caribbean 360 is reporting that a new U.S. IRS law could negatively impact the Caribbean tourism industry. According to the Nassau Guardian, the Bahamas Hotel and Tourism Association (BHTA) has brought to the urgent attention of the Caribbean Hotel and Tourism Association the fact that US credit card companies have been mandated to implement an automatic 28% withholding fee unless the merchant receiving the payment is compliant with new Inland Revenue Service (IRS) regulations. This means that credit card processing companies must collect and verify the tax identification number (TIN) and legal name associated with that number for each merchant customer. If there is a discrepancy, then the 28% withholding fee goes into effect. This makes now more than ever a critical time for people to understand and get the cra refund, if they are eligible.
Without it, there will be massive potential knock-on effects on other economies due to the defecit in funds. If this happens, then hotels and restaurants that rely primarily on American tourists could face cash flow problems, not to mention the cost of compliant with the new tax code. This means that many people are looking at this change in the law with a worried eye. Currently, American Express is the only credit card company enforcing the new law which went into effect January of 2012.
“History must restore what slavery took away from the Negro, his glorious past to act as stimulation for inspiration for him. Pride of race is the antidote for prejudice” – Arturo Schomburg
Arturo Schomburg’s massive historical collection on Black culture was bought by the New York Public Library in 1938. (Google Images)
Born January 24, 1874, Arturo Alfonso Schomburg was a historian, writer, and activist. Schomburg was born in Santurce, Puerto Rico. While he was in grade school, one of his teachers claimed that blacks had no history, heroes or accomplishments, which inspired Schomburg to prove him wrong.
Schomburg attended San Juan’s Institute of Instruction to become a teacher and also studied in the Danish West Indies, doing a great deal of research on Negro literature. Schomburg came to America in 1891 and ten years later moved to New York City, working at a law firm as a researcher. During this time, he actively supported Cuban and Puerto Rican Independence, and served as secretary of Las dos Antillas, an organization working for this cause.
In 1924, while in Europe, he searched for and acquired valuable information on Negro history. In Seville, Spain he dug into the original, loosely collected records of the Indies and was able to shed new light on Negro history. In 1929 Schomburg retired from the Bankers Trust Company and took a position at Fisk University as curator of his vast collection of papers, which now bears his name. The collected works consist of more than 5000 volumes and thousands of pamphlets, old manuscripts, prints and bound sections of newspaper and magazine clippings, is the largest and finest of its kind in existence.
He ranks as the foremost historian and collector of books on Blacks.
In 1928, the New York Public Library system purchased his collection of literature, art and other materials and appointed him curator of the Schomburg Collection of Negro Literature and Art (later renamed the Arthur Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture). Schomburg died June 8, 1938.
The Akosua Report: Facts on The African Diaspora, is written by Akosua Lowery. Follow her on Twitter @AkosuaLowery.
Jamaica’s Sheckema Cunningham by being the first non-European and only black female to win Gold at the Dutch Open held in Eindhoven, Netherlands. (Google Images)
Caribbean 360 is reporting that Sheckema Cunningham, a rising star in the world of martial arts, has made history. Jamaica’s sports minister Neita Headley is reporting that Cunningham placed Jamaica in the spotlight after capturing gold at the Dutch Open in Eindhoven, Netherlands over the weekend.
Cunningham’s medal was her first European championship gold and she has become the only non-European and only black female participant to have achieved the feat in the 750-strong line-up of competitors.
Cunningham participated in the micro-weight division and defeated her Italian opponent in a close semi-final match before going on to defeat an opponent from Poland in the final.
Lincoln MacCauley Alexander was Canada’s first black Member of Parliament. (Google Images)
Lincoln MacCauley Alexander
“He was already a trailblazer, working as a lawyer in Hamilton — one of the first black lawyers in Ontario — but the African trip awakened him to even greater possibilities. The trip was, he wrote in his book, a journey of self-awareness. ‘I became conscious of my blackness…I had come from a white world. In Africa I was a black man and I was somebody. I started standing tall.’” – Lincoln MacCauley Alexander
January 21, 1922 Lincoln MacCauley Alexander, Canada’s first black Member of Parliament, was born in Toronto, Canada. After serving in the Royal Canadian Air Force during World War II, Alexander graduated from Osgoode Hall Law School in 1953. In 1968, he was elected to the Canadian House of Commons, making him the first black Member of Parliament. Alexander was re-elected in four federal elections, and served in the House of Commons for nearly twelve years. In 1992 he was appointed to the Order of Ontario and was inducted into Hamilton’s Gallery of Distinction. Lincoln MacCauley Alexander died at his home in Hamilton, Ontario on October 19, 2012. He was 90.
The Akosua Report: Facts on The African Diaspora, is written by Akosua Lowery. Follow her on Twitter @AkosuaLowery.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s dream is inspiring DREAMers, who are seeking a clear path to citizenship. (Google Images)
by Chad U. Jones
In the spirit of MLK Day this week, the DREAMers — the relentless caste of undocumented, first-generation, young Americans who are pursuing higher education against odds of deportation — are among the most visible civil rights leaders of the 21st century. As a Black man, I am inspired by the dream of Martin Luther King, particularly his faith that a racially desegregated America would come true and that we — Black and Brown included — would “be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.” I see that dream inextricably tied to the efforts of the fearless DREAMers.
Much like the teenagers and young adults who were Freedom Riders in the early 1960s, the DREAMers have repudiated their elders who counseled that they have more patience, just sit quietly for a little longer. Indeed the DREAMers know that there is no time like now: more immigrants have been deported since 2009 than ever before – 396,906 people in 2011. For the pursuit of a higher education and in coalition with the 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the US, the DREAMers offer a vision of comprehensive immigration reform steeped in justice and dignity. Plenty of African Americans may hesitate at the notion that we share a similar lot with undocumented immigrants, who are overwhelmingly people of color. But evidence of shared fate is present in the Supreme Court challenge of Fisher vs. University of Texas where the highest court in the land may put the final nail in the coffin of affirmative action.
Sixty years after the legal dismantling of segregation, intermittent integration has confused many Blacks about where we stand and our relationship to the power establishment. Many of us have consumed the blue pill of individualism, mistakenly thinking that we have made it. We are deluded because a select number of us have received college degrees and white collar jobs, home mortgages and fancy cars, duped into believing that we live in a post-racial nation, evident by the blackness in the White House.
Quiet obedience can go on for decades, as happened for Jose Antonio Vargas. Vargas – the Filipino-American, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist who was still undocumented 18 years after emigrating – is now one of the 16 percent of undocumented immigrants spared by President Obama’s Deferred Action for the Childhood Arrivals executive order signed in June 2012. For the other 84 percent of undocumented immigrants, life in the USA is a 21st Century version of Langston Hughes’ “dream deferred.”
For immigrant families, an organized mob threatens to storm through the door in the middle of the night, just as Black families feared 100 years ago. The three letters have changed from KKK to ICE, but the destruction of families and communities is the same. Rather than the de facto lynching orchestrated by Grand Wizards and sheriffs, immigrant families face the threat of de jure detention and deportation by local law enforcement officials, which has been greatly expanded by the Obama Administration. These policies backfire by harboring more fear and greater mistrust between communities of color and local authorities.
The federal government is wasting billions of dollars on the vast system to detain and deport immigrants, approximately $18 billion according to a report released this month by the Migration Policy Institute. This is more than all other federal law enforcement combined. These are the misguided priorities of a broken immigration system.
Our federal officials could choose to spend $18 billion on new school buildings that are equipped for 21st Century education rather than pour it down the drain on high-tech surveillance in the war on immigrants. Like African Americans have done for centuries, the DREAMers are organizing for more access to education, for progressive policies that expand, rather than restrict, opportunities to learn.
This January, let us remember how Martin Luther King implored in countless church sermons that we must love those who hate us. Love is the only way for us to confront the aggressor, transforming ourselves and them simultaneously. The young people clamoring for education, safety, jobs, healthy food and communities recognize that law enforcement will only relent when confronted as happened with Erika Andiola’s brother and mother earlier this week in Phoenix. The people must organize in order to stop the excesses of Homeland Security.
In this spirit of nonviolent struggle, the DREAMers persist. Their numbers have grown and inspired new iterations of young people over the last five years. Their focus is on creating more political will for comprehensive immigration reform that supports, rather than criminalizes, families. By standing up to the threats of deportation and detention, they have shown their elders that nonviolent, direct action will cause the state to relent. With an unquenchable life force, new formations such as Undocumented and Unafraid in Chicago, and the Dream Defenders in Florida are rising across the country.
Along with Julian Bond, Melissa Harris Perry, and Ben Jealous, I stand with the DREAMers because the assault on immigrants over the last decade have reconstituted a permanent caste of second class citizenry that is separate and unequal. The DREAMers emulate SNCC by confronting segregation – registering voters, crossing state lines with their campaigns, doing all direct actions non-violently. Now, like then, it will be the concerted efforts of determined and inspired young people that catapult all of us closer to fulfilling our nation’s democratic promise. It was everyday people who registered to vote, sat at lunch counters, and rode on buses across state lines who ultimately broke Jim Crow’s back. 50 years later, the dispossessed and oppressed are realizing another USA is possible, and bring all of us closer to the dream.
Chad U. Jones is from the Mountain West, and lived in Kenya, Guatemala, Swaziland, Minnesota and New York. Follow him on Twitter @FLO_A
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s dream is inspiring DREAMers, who are seeking a clear path to citizenship. (Google Images)
by Chad U. Jones
In the spirit of MLK Day this week, the DREAMers — the relentless caste of undocumented, first-generation, young Americans who are pursuing higher education against odds of deportation — are among the most visible civil rights leaders of the 21st century. Degree-educated foreign nationals looking to come to the US to pursue highly specialized professions may want to pursue an H1B visa in order to do this. As a Black man, I am inspired by the dream of Martin Luther King, particularly his faith that a racially desegregated America would come true and that we — Black and Brown included — would “be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.” I see that dream inextricably tied to the efforts of the fearless DREAMers.
Much like the teenagers and young adults who were Freedom Riders in the early 1960s, the DREAMers have repudiated their elders who counseled that they have more patience, just sit quietly for a little longer. Indeed the DREAMers know that there is no time like now: more immigrants have been deported since 2009 than ever before – 396,906 people in 2011. For the pursuit of a higher education and in coalition with the 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the US, the DREAMers offer a vision of comprehensive immigration reform steeped in justice and dignity. Plenty of African Americans may hesitate at the notion that we share a similar lot with undocumented immigrants, who are overwhelmingly people of color. But evidence of shared fate is present in the Supreme Court challenge of Fisher vs. University of Texas where the highest court in the land may put the final nail in the coffin of affirmative action.
Sixty years after the legal dismantling of segregation, intermittent integration has confused many Blacks about where we stand and our relationship to the power establishment. Many of us have consumed the blue pill of individualism, mistakenly thinking that we have made it. We are deluded because a select number of us have received college degrees and white collar jobs, home mortgages and fancy cars, duped into believing that we live in a post-racial nation, evident by the blackness in the White House.
Quiet obedience can go on for decades, as happened for Jose Antonio Vargas. Vargas – the Filipino-American, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist who was still undocumented 18 years after emigrating – is now one of the 16 percent of undocumented immigrants spared by President Obama’s Deferred Action for the Childhood Arrivals executive order signed in June 2012. For the other 84 percent of undocumented immigrants, life in the USA is a 21st Century version of Langston Hughes’ “dream deferred.”
For immigrant families, an organized mob threatens to storm through the door in the middle of the night, just as Black families feared 100 years ago. The three letters have changed from KKK to ICE, but the destruction of families and communities is the same. Rather than the de facto lynching orchestrated by Grand Wizards and sheriffs, immigrant families face the threat of de jure detention and deportation by local law enforcement officials, which has been greatly expanded by the Obama Administration. These policies backfire by harboring more fear and greater mistrust between communities of color and local authorities.
The federal government is wasting billions of dollars on the vast system to detain and deport immigrants, approximately $18 billion according to a report released this month by the Migration Policy Institute. This is more than all other federal law enforcement combined. These are the misguided priorities of a broken immigration system.
Our federal officials could choose to spend $18 billion on new school buildings that are equipped for 21st Century education rather than pour it down the drain on high-tech surveillance in the war on immigrants. Like African Americans have done for centuries, the DREAMers are organizing for more access to education, for progressive policies that expand, rather than restrict, opportunities to learn.
This January, let us remember how Martin Luther King implored in countless church sermons that we must love those who hate us. Love is the only way for us to confront the aggressor, transforming ourselves and them simultaneously. The young people clamoring for education, safety, jobs, healthy food and communities recognize that law enforcement will only relent when confronted as happened with Erika Andiola’s brother and mother earlier this week in Phoenix. The people must organize in order to stop the excesses of Homeland Security.
In this spirit of nonviolent struggle, the DREAMers persist. Their numbers have grown and inspired new iterations of young people over the last five years. Their focus is on creating more political will for comprehensive immigration reform that supports, rather than criminalizes, families. By standing up to the threats of deportation and detention, they have shown their elders that nonviolent, direct action will cause the state to relent. With an unquenchable life force, new formations such as Undocumented and Unafraid in Chicago, and the Dream Defenders in Florida are rising across the country.
Along with Julian Bond, Melissa Harris Perry, and Ben Jealous, I stand with the DREAMers because the assault on immigrants over the last decade have reconstituted a permanent caste of second class citizenry that is separate and unequal. The DREAMers emulate SNCC by confronting segregation – registering voters, crossing state lines with their campaigns, doing all direct actions non-violently. Now, like then, it will be the concerted efforts of determined and inspired young people that catapult all of us closer to fulfilling our nation’s democratic promise. It was everyday people who registered to vote, sat at lunch counters, and rode on buses across state lines who ultimately broke Jim Crow’s back. 50 years later, the dispossessed and oppressed are realizing another USA is possible, and bring all of us closer to the dream.
Chad U. Jones is from the Mountain West, and lived in Kenya, Guatemala, Swaziland, Minnesota and New York. Follow him on Twitter @FLO_A
Prosecutors want Liberia’s ex-president sentenced to 30 additional years in prison. (Google Images)
AllAfrica.com is reporting that prosecutors at the ongoing appeal hearing of ex-president Charles Taylor have asked judges of the UN backed Special Court for Sierra Leone to lengthen his prison sentence by 30 more years.
AllAfrica.com writes:
The request came at the start of Taylor’s appeal hearing Tuesday. The court sentenced Taylor to 50 years in prison last May for aiding and abetting the brutal Sierra Leonean civil war. But lawyers representing called the verdict a “miscarriage of justice” and want the conviction to be quashed.
Prosecutors want the 50 year sentence extended because former president Charles Taylor also gave rebels orders to kill, which they don’t feel is reflected in the sentencing. If the judge rules in favor of prosecutors, then Taylor’s sentence will be extended to 80 years of imprisonment. Taylor is the first former head of state to be convicted of war crimes by an international court since the Nuremberg trials of Nazis after World War II.
Kenyans march through the streets in celebration of President-Elect Barack Obama’s historic election in 2008. (Google Images)
On the heels of the 2013 inauguration for the United States 44th President Barack Hussein Obama II, the Burton Wire decided to find some videos that show how his historic election and inauguration as the nation’s first African-American president was celebrated throughout the African Diaspora. Take a look:
Kenyans march through the streets in celebration of President-Elect Barack Obama’s historic election in 2008. (Google Images)
On the heels of the 2013 inauguration for the United States 44th President Barack Hussein Obama II, the Burton Wire decided to find some videos that show how his historic election and inauguration as the nation’s first African-American president was celebrated throughout the African Diaspora. Take a look:
Paul Robeson was an exceptional scholar, political activist, athlete and performer who was persecuted by the United States government because of his political beliefs. (Photo Credit: PBS.org)
by Nsenga K. Burton, Ph.D.
If you’re familiar with the term, “Renaissance Man,” then the name Paul Robeson is not news to you. The son of an escaped United States slave, Robeson was a tremendous athlete, scholar, activist and performer whose radical beliefs contributed to his being marginalized in the acting and political arenas. Before being persecuted by the United States government, Robeson starred in plays and films written, produced and directed by black and white filmmakers, which was exceptional at the time. In 1925, Robeson starred in African-American film pioneer Oscar Micheaux’s Body and Soul. Robeson played the dual-role of a corrupt preacher and the upstanding gentleman who was the preacher’s brother, reflecting to some extent his friend W.E.B. DuBois’ philosophy about double consciousness. PBS.orgwrites:
Born in 1898, Paul Robeson grew up in Princeton, New Jersey. His father had escaped slavery and become a Presbyterian minister, while his mother was from a distinguished Philadelphia family. At seventeen, he was given a scholarship to Rutgers University, where he received an unprecedented twelve major letters in four years and was his class valedictorian. After graduating he went on to Columbia University Law School, and, in the early 1920s, took a job with a New York law firm. Racial strife at the firm ended Robeson’s career as a lawyer early, but he was soon to find an appreciative home for his talents.
Returning to his love of public speaking, Robeson began to find work as an actor. In the mid-1920s he played the lead in Eugene O’Neill’s “All God’s Chillun Got Wings” (1924) and “The Emperor Jones” (1925). Throughout the late 1920s and 1930s, he was a widely acclaimed actor and singer. With songs such as his trademark “Ol’ Man River,” he became one of the most popular concert singers of his time. His “Othello” was the longest-running Shakespeare play in Broadway history, running for nearly three hundred performances. It is still considered one of the great-American Shakespeare productions. While his fame grew in the United States, he became equally well-loved internationally. He spoke fifteen languages, and performed benefits throughout the world for causes of social justice. More than any other performer of his time, he believed that the famous have a responsibility to fight for justice and peace.
As an actor, Robeson was one of the first black men to play serious roles in the primarily white American theater. He performed in a number of films as well, including a re-make of “The Emperor Jones” (1933) and “Song of Freedom” (1936). In a time of deeply entrenched racism, he continually struggled for further understanding of cultural difference. At the height of his popularity, Robeson was a national symbol and a cultural leader in the war against fascism abroad and racism at home. He was admired and befriended by both the general public and prominent personalities, including Eleanor Roosevelt, W.E.B. Du Bois, Joe Louis, Pablo Neruda, Lena Horne, and Harry Truman. While his varied talents and his outspoken defense of civil liberties brought him many admirers, it also made him enemies among conservatives trying to maintain the status quo.
During the 1940s, Robeson’s black nationalist and anti-colonialist activities brought him to the attention of Senator Joseph McCarthy. Despite his contributions as an entertainer to the Allied forces during World War II, Robeson was singled out as a major threat to American democracy. Every attempt was made to silence and discredit him, and in 1950 the persecution reached a climax when his passport was revoked. He could no longer travel abroad to perform, and his career was stifled. Of this time, Lloyd Brown, a writer and long-time colleague of Robeson, states: “Paul Robeson was the most persecuted, the most ostracized, the most condemned black man in America, then or ever.”
It was eight years before his passport was reinstated. A weary and triumphant Robeson began again to travel and give concerts in England and Australia. But the years of hardship had taken their toll. After several bouts of depression, he was admitted to a hospital in London, where he was administered continued shock treatments. When Robeson returned to the United States in 1963, he was misdiagnosed several times and treated for a variety of physical and psychological problems. Realizing that he was no longer the powerful singer or agile orator of his prime, he decided to step out of the public eye. He retired to Philadelphia and lived in self-imposed seclusion until his death in 1976.
Robeson died on January 23 from complications from a stroke. His body lay in state at the historic Mother A.M.E. Zion church in Harlem.
Among the thousands who crowded into the historic sanctuary were faces from the old Harlem Writers Guild, the old Left and others who were just old…For Harry Belafonte, one of the handful of celebrities who braved the rain that night, ‘An important piece of black American History ended with Paul.’ Belafonte met Robeson in the years after WWII when Harry was part of a Harlem group called the Committee for the Negro in the Arts. A $500 contribution from Robeson helped get the organization started. ‘If there had been no Paul Robeson,’ said Harry Belafonte, ‘There would be no me.’
Other attendees included civil rights activist and labor organizer A. Phillip Randolph. Robeson was 77.
