President Obama Delivers Remarks at University of Cape Town

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The First Family Arrives in Capetown

President Obama speaking to the students and citizens at University of Cape Town. Watch it live here. We'll post full video and photos when available.

President Obama speech Cape Town South Africa-Audio

The First Family Visits Robben Island

President Obama visits the Robben Island prison cell where Nelson Mandela spent 18 of his 27 years of imprisonment.













From left, First Lady Michelle Obama, Sasha Obama, Ahmed Kathrada, former prisoner with Nelson Mandela guiding the tour, U.S. President Back Obama, Marian Robinson and Leslie Robinson, look out over the courtyard of the prison on Robben Island, South Africa, Sunday, June 30, 2013. Former South African president Nelson Mandela spent 18 years of his 27-year prison term on the island locked up by the former apartheid government.

---AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster



US President Barack Obama (R), and First Lady Michelle Obama (2L) listen to former prisoner Ahmed Kathrada with Michelle Obama's mother Marian Robinson (L) as they tour the limestone quarry where prisoners worked on Robben Island off the coast of Cape Town, South Africa on June 30, 2013. President Barack Obama was "deeply humbled" by a visit to the cell where Nelson Mandela spent years as a prisoner, in a solemn homage Sunday to the critically ill hero he was unable to see in Pretoria.

---SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images



U.S. President Barack Obama, second from left, and the first family tour a rock quarry where Robben Island prisoners once worked near Cape Town, South Africa, Sunday, June 30, 2013. Robben Island is an historic Apartheid-era prison that held black political prisoners including former South African president and anti-apartheid hero Nelson Mandela. From left, tour guide Ahmed Kathrada, Obama, daughter Sasha, First Lady Michelle Obama, and daughter Malia.

---AP Photo/Evan Vucci

Robben Island Jail Obama Visits Mandela Cell







President Barack Obama and his family listen to Robben Island prison guide Ahmed Kathrada, who was an inmate with Nelson Mandela

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The First Family in South Africa

Cannot give enough thanks for The Obama Diary, which has done such a fabulous job of covering not only this Overseas Trip, but every other Overseas Trip of President Obama, while the MSM has done a blackout.

The President and First Lady arrive for an official state dinner in Pretoria with President Zuma and First Lady Thobeka Madiba-Zuma.





The First Lady's Google Hangout









The President had a Town Hall with young African leaders.

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The First Family Arrives in South Africa

Hat tip-The Obama Diary:

The First Family in Senegal- More Images

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The First Family visited Goree Island while in Senegal.



U.S. President Barack Obama (2nd L) and his daughter Malia (L) arrive at Goree Island, a former slave trader's port, June 27, 2013 in Dakar. Obama's trip, his second to the continent as president, will take him to Senegal, South Africa and Tanzania.

REUTERS/Gary Cameron







U.S. President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama receive a bouquet as they arrive on Goree Island near Dakar, Senegal, June 27, 2013. Obama visited the island on Thursday where African slaves in past centuries were shipped west.

---REUTERS/Jason Reed



US President Barack Obama (L) and First Lady Michelle Obama look out from the Door of No Return while touring the House of Slaves, or Maison des Esclaves, at Goree Island off the coast of Dakar on June 27, 2013. Obama and his family toured the museum at the site where African slaves were held before going through the door and being shipped off the continent as slaves.

---AFP PHOTO / SAUL LOEB



U.S. President Barack Obama greets well-wishers during his visit to Goree Island near Dakar, Senegal, June 27, 2013. Obama visited the island on Thursday where African slaves in past centuries were shipped west.

--REUTERS/Jason Reed



The wonderful zizi wrote some words about the people of Senegal.

A Note About the People of Senegal

Teranga means “Welcome” in Wolof, the predominant language. And the people living on this Westernmost bulge of the African continent truly are some of the most hospitable people you’ll ever know. Climactically, however, Senegal is the Western Hemisphere’s house of horrors, as many of our hurricanes are birthed off Senegal’s coast when hot dry Sahara and Sahel winds meet southerly cold North Atlantic winds plus moisture from the warm Atlantic Ocean currents, The ITCZ clash zone known as The Doldrums , to form the building blocks of storms

. Yet nothing takes one’s breath away more than standing on the craggy Senegalese coast in the evening and seeing the copper-gold sunset over the rambunctious Atlantic ocean. No wonder Senegal’s world famous poet and first post-colonial President, Leopold Senghor, called this land his “Childhood Kingdom” whose heartbeat is the Tam Tam (talking drum).

Senghor’s eyes, though were mesmerized by the beauty of Senegalese women. His famously erotic poem, Black Woman, published in his 1948 Anthologie de la nouvelle poésie nègre et malgache , became a historical landmark for placing the African woman on a pedestal as a worthy model of beauty, thus challenging the centuries-old denigration of black women as antithesis of ideal white femininity.

“Naked woman, black woman

Dressed in your color that is life, in your form that is beauty!

I grew up in your shadow. The softness of your hands

Shielded my eyes, and now at the height of Summer and Noon,

From the crest of a charred hilltop I discover you, Promised Land

And your beauty strikes my heart like an eagle’s lightning flash.

[…snip]

Naked woman, dark woman

Oil no breeze can ripple, oil soothing the thighs

Of athletes and the thighs of the princes of Mali

Gazelle with celestial limbs, pearls are stars

Upon the night of your skin. delight of the mind’s riddles,

The reflections of red gold from your shimmering skin

In the shade of your hair, my despair

Lightens in the close suns of your eyes.”

U.S. President Barack Obama meets with African drummers on Goree Island near Dakar, Senegal, June 27, 2013. Obama visited the island on Thursday where African slaves in past centuries were shipped west.

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More from the First Family in Senegal

The First Family is still in Senegal. Some more pics.

Hat tips-The Obama Diary, News24:





President Obama looks out of the “door of no return” during a tour of the ‘House of Slaves’ on Goree Island

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The First Family Continues in Senegal

President Obama and Senegal President Sall shake hands after their joint news conference at Presidential Palace in Dakar

First Lady Michelle Obama hugs students at Martin Luther King middle school, an all-girls school in Dakar, Senegal, June 27

President Barack Obama greets Senegalese President Macky Sall as U.S. first lady Michelle Obama and Senegalese First Lady Mariame Faye Sall look on, at the presidential palace in Dakar, Senegal June 27

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The First Family Lands in Africa: First Stop- Senegal

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The First Family is visiting Africa- first stop, Senegal.

TO CLUELESS MEDIA: PRES. OBAMA’S IN AFRICA ‘CUZ IT HAS TOP TEN FASTEST GROWING ECONOMIES IN WORLD

by @zizii2

“THERE is no shortage of economic growth in Africa. Six of the world’s ten fastest growing economies of the past decade are in sub-Saharan Africa. A clutch of countries have enjoyed growth in income per person of more than 5% a year since 2007.”

Nothing demonstrates the vapidity of the corporate media than the rancid ignorance they display when they are gung-ho to score cheap shots at President Obama on important matters, rather than do basic research!!!

And so it is that on undertaking a long overdue working visit to three countries on the continent of Africa, the corporate media including FOXNews universe display once again the national embarrassment that they have become. But for the fact that they’d bleat about threats to their “First Amendment Rights”, I’d rather Pres Obama left them behind to indulge in muffin stories and similar shiny objects they chase best. Foreign media ALWAYS outshine ours anyway, so their absence would actually improve the media pool at these foreign pressers. And the public would be better informed for it.

So cynical journos like David Nakamura of @WAPO , and colleagues at AtlanticWire @NYT , Moonie News, @ABC, @NBC, @MSNBC, @CBS, @CNN, @FOX, @YahooNews, here are 12 FACTS to get into their heads before they utter any more inanities about the President’s trip to Africa, and carping endlessly about “costs of trip” versus sequestered White House tours. Without the 80% of Coltan produced from the Congo belt running your iPhone/iPad or other tablet LED screens, they’d be pecking away at an old typewriter (well, assuming even the steel in the machine’s housing isn’t from African iron ore).

We are talking about Africa in the 21st Century, not some Henry Stanley 19th century racist travelogue you read about “natives doing quaint tribal dances”, or as the late Literary maestro Chinua Achebe snarkily penned at the end of his seminal novel Things Fall Apart, the colonizer’s version of history in which the indigenous African only warrants a passing line about his own history. No we are talking about a forward moving continent, warts and all that brooks no nonsense from anybody, superpower or not!

******

To be honest President Obama’s travel to the continent of Africa is at best being perceived as a face-saving effort, as many on the continent are not impressed with the scant attention he has paid to African countries. The most favorable observation is that at least he has left the continent alone to chart its own course without the undue meddling of Cold War America or condescending administrations that followed the collapse of the battle between superpowers.

While there is some loud grumbling about the fact that America’s obsession with the “War on Terror” and recent variations in the Maghreb (Libya, Algeria, Tunisia), Sahel (Mali) occludes every other subject during bilateral and multilateral talks

If many of you remember, President Obama promised to engage actively with the continent’s innovative thinkers during the seminal White House Townhall with Young African Leaders.

Read the rest of this informative piece at the link above.  

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President Obama Gives His Plans on Climate Change

President Barack Obama outlined a long-awaited plan to tackle climate change, which included new regulations on power plants and protections for coastlines against sea level rise. In a speech at Georgetown University, Mr. Obama announced a presidential action plan to launch the first-ever federal regulations on carbon dioxide emitted by existing power plants.

The State of Things

Camille is a brilliant poster over at Pragmatic Obots Unite.

She routinely drops wonderful knowledge.

Last night, she dropped this.

CamilleCamille •

I haven't been this sad in such a long time-

How anyone can look at what the Supreme court did today and feel good about, or comfortable with it - How any of these justices can sleep tonight or look themselves in the mirror in the morning--?

Even Mitch McConnell stuttered, stammered and fidgeted and couldn't even look straight into the camera as he uncomfortably commented - and only as the lone person who even "bothered" to do so - as he stood with some members of his caucus.

In a time when the election and re-election of a black president plainly exposed the worst of America's racist underbelly - forcing a vast majority of racists out of hibernation - and inspiring and initiating a whole new generation of hardcore racists along the way--

Emboldened and egged on by the support, backing and at the exploitative urging of some known and faceless mercenary oil and Wall street billionaires and their media gofers looking to mischievously stoke racial prejudices, discontent and distrust of this president in particular, and government in general, only so that while people are consumed with these distractions, they swoop in like the vultures they are, completely take over and pillage whatever little they don't already own and control--

In a time when the first black President and First Lady have been so disrespected in such unbelievable and unprecedented ways, and still without any provocation on their part, subjected to an endless barrage of vicious, hateful and dehumanizing attacks designed to penetrate and strip and diminish their being and destroy their spirits-

In a time when a Sikh is killed for the heck of it, and only because some ignorant racist mistook him for a "Muslim terrorist"-- and a 4th generation American kid is snatched up off the streets and deported to Mexico because they're certain that with her dark olive skin she's got to be "illegal"--

In a time when people are brazenly defending the deeply-held and incredibly harmful racist hankerings of a sly old southern bigot-- and publicly raising funds for and defending the cold-blooded murderer of an innocent young black boy--

In a time when people blatantly pretend not to be able to easily distinguish between the voice of a grown man -- and the undeniable screams for help of a petrified and still growing and developing adolescent boy whose still transitioning breaking voice can be easily identified by the punctuations of modulating pitch - warbling and high one second - and croaky and low the next--

In such a time as this, with everything pointing to still prevalent, entrenched and many insurmountable racist mindsets and societal structures -- in such a time as this, we are told by the Supreme court of the United States, led by a man whose life ambition has always been to do away with as much of the life-saving Civil Rights Act, the VRA just being a start -

We are told that our very dysfunctional and delicate Union is just fine and dandy -- and that this most important law which has for years largely guarded the few essential rights of the minority - and made for progress and fairness in an organically inequitable nation -- that this law is no longer necessary---

The oil and Wall street bought racist justices and their token black robe, doing double duty, took away the single most important law in our Democracy only stopping long enough to tell us that we've now overcome - even as the racism grows and plays out each minute on our streets, capitol, in our media and every facet of our society--

Even as their partners in crime at the various State legislatures are busy quickly turning back the hands of time to their preferred nostalgic era -- the era when coloured people knew their place and Paula Deen's great, great, grand pappy was happy and content and had not an inkling that his hardworking slaves were ever going to walk free - and that he'd die out of desperation at his own hands with his suicide avenged by his racist, slave-driving great, great, grand daughter in 2013 ---

How ironic she's outed in the very same week the supreme justices told us times had changed and then proceeded to do the most important bidding of their monied and racist owners---

Interesting times--

another brilliant comment: nathkatun7

I was 19 years when the 1965 Voting Rights Act was passed and signed into law. Like every one in the 60s, I regarded the Act as a monumental achievement although it had come at a terrible cost. Precious lives were lost in the struggle to secure voting rights. Today's Supreme Court decision hit me so hard that I had decided not to say or write anything.

I spent the day trying to reflect on this horrible day. Five men of the highest court in the country, in a decision without precedent, erased one of the most important achievements of the Black Freedom Struggle, which was earned as a result of the sacrifices of so many people, many of whom are no longer with us. But then I realized that what happened today, though horrible, is no where near the horrors that our ancestors had to endure without ever giving up or losing hope.

If our ancestors could endure 244 years of slavery and more than100 years of Jim Crow, then this too shall pass. Re-watching Dr. King's speech, at the conclusion of the Selma-to-Montgomery March, renewed my determination to press on.

Today was pay back day by the right wingers on the Court because we showed up twice, in unprecedented numbers, to elect Barack Obama President of the United States. I hope we will pay the right wingers back by showing up in even greater numbers, in 2014, to defeat right wing Republicans at all levels of government. We especially need to focus on the importance of electing members of Congress who are committed to undo today's Supreme Court abomination.