>>What you are calling for is
>>to turn off all the
>>water and light to our
>>neighborhoods and towns.
>
>How do you obtain the knowledge
>to run a power company?

It's not just the knowledge behind generators and turbines. Anyone who has taken the first semester of engineering physics can tell you that.

Worst case scenario, we mine coal, refine it, burn it in furnaces, heat up water, generates steam, rotates turbines, which spins around a coiled magnet. That's electricity in a nutshell.

But where do we get the turbines, where do we get the factories that build generators, where do we get the mines for the metal, the chemical factories, the power lines, the towers, the wiring....

Black folks know how to do things. I know plenty of educated (formal and non-formal) cats. But the knowledge is not the key. It is access to capital and resources. Black folks work hard, but I don't see generations of our people for centuries trying to recreate 20 th century America for free.

When you read the last page of the final call you look at "What the Muslims Want", and they are asking for those kinds of things, land, mines, and other natural resources.

The alternative to this, is to opt out of our highly technological society, leaving things like mechanized agriculture and modern medicine behind. The new Republic of Nubia, would probably look a whole lot like the Nubia of old.

> Is it really above
>and beyond the abilities of
>black people to learn things
>like this? The Ancient
>Egyptians had a plumbing system.

They didn't have waste water treatment facilities, flushing toilets, real sewage control. The modern egyptians don't have that. One of my ex-gals was egyptian and an engineer. She used to kill me with the details of the lack of infrastructure in Egypt.

> Not to diss but
>this sounds like an excuse
>to me.

It's not the knowledge. For Black Americans to create their own nation within a nation, a truly self-sufficient nation with the level of convenience that most black folks take for granted, is an insurmountable task. (at least if we do it from scratch).

Your idea is romantic, but it hasn't been thought out, or thoroughly presented here.

If we go by what the Dead Prez(who really seem to want a slice of an American pie, not their own mill, orchard, and ovens) want, food, clothing and shelter, those basic necessities are hard to rock from scratch.

But maybe there is a movement within these paragraphs. Maybe we could do without the ac's and bmw's, soft cotton, plentiful food, et cetera. It is concievable that we relearn the technologies of old, and exist in a modified state. But the feeling I get when I talk to cats who want their own nation, is that they really want what America already offers them. Albeit the path for the colored man is far more arduous than those of the majority.

>I hear that. I just
>believe black people would be
>more focused if we acknowledged
>and embraced our own communal
>needs first.

It's not as if we don't do that. We have our own black pages, we have our churches, barber shops, eateries... But in terms of heavy industry, R&D, and those things that would make us competitors of our white counterparts, we don't have the access to capital. Often when black folks really make it (multi-millionaires), they don't get together and figure out some big plans.

Our educated brethren, myself included, get their knowledge, and then sell their skill sets to others, in order to make the business owners's pockets fat. Big deal a basketball player makes 500 million over 10 years. How much did the owners of the team make? How much did the people who make the products he endorse make? Master P makes the fortune 500. Great, but how many people is he employing for the long term. It's one thing to own a studio, it's another thing to be building mixing boards and amplifiers.

Maybe I have a major manufacturing bent, but I know it is a sure fire way to employ folks who have been to college (as designers and engineers) as well as those who haven't been to college (as technicians).

Now when you have a major industry in a black section of town, then you can open your high class soul food restaurants, your fast food caribbean restaurants, your art galleries, your clubs, your black history museums. When you have that kind of power in your own community, others can become your suppliers. When it comes time for candidates to get elected, or when you want to open a new facility, you got folks bending over backwards to give you land and tax breaks. You can get your technology classes into the local community college, you can endow a chair at the university.

But until folks who want their own separate nations start really talking about what it takes to run your community, it's all just talk.

peace
k. orr