Only months before the 9.0 earthquake and the resulting tsunami on Dec. 26, 2004, I stood 160 miles from the Indian Ocean epicenter on the northern shores of the Island of Sumatra, Indonesia at Banda Aceh. I had warned my client that the purchase of the PT Humpuss Oil and Gas Refinery on the flat lands of Banda Aceh would be subject to ocean flooding due to storm surges at sea. He did not purchase the refinery.

However, even today, one can only surmise as to how a Black owned engineering firm, as mine, was written into this northern Sumatra gas and oil development agreement by the office of Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri (a woman) to do all the engineering work. The warm and gentle people throughout the northern provinces, and particularly the Aceh Province where the tsunami wave has left major devastation, received me as a brother. Even my client enjoyed the honor of being the first Christian to be granted oil and gas development rights by a Muslim country. I call this, “global affirmative action.”

In 2003, my office was invited to propose on the management and operations of the Mindanao Container Terminal Port in the Philippine Islands. I tried to explain to the Philippine Port Authority that although my office had designed over 20% of the container terminals at the Port of Oakland, California, our experience of managing the operations of a container port was quite limited. My office, in joint venture with another Philippine firm, was awarded the project anyway, three days after Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo (a woman) dedicated the project, rejecting 11 other international firms. Although, I had to ultimately decline this project, in a country that was originally settled by the Negritos from East Africa, I call this…… “global affirmative action.”

In another part of the world, the National Black Chamber of Commerce takes a trade mission and safari to Nairobi, Kenya in February 2005, but has already been given a coffee roasting and distribution company through the Kenya Chamber of Commerce. (For ordering, see http://rxfactory.shop/.)
One of the three Black kings in Ghana has given the California Black Chamber of Commerce the development rights of its minerals refinery. Ethiopia, Uganda, Sierra Leone and Liberia have visited the U.S. to extend their “global affirmative action” to African American businesspersons.

On the domestic scene, UC Regent Ward Connerly, who led the passage of Proposition 209 in 1996 “gutting” affirmative action in California, announced in Dec. 2004, that he would not seek reappointment as a Regent. By Any Means Necessary (BAMN) collected over 15,000 petition signatures for the removal of Connerly. President Bush’s new chairman of the United States Commission on Civil Rights doubts that racial discrimination still exists and once described affirmative action as a “big lie.” African American and other minority businesses that find limited opportunities in America or want to expand their businesses, will find opportunities under “global affirmative action.”

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