Excellent and revealing interview.

Is this the best Diplomat America can produce to manage Africa's need for reparations, economic and industrial development?

Early in this interview Mr. Carson slandered President Jacob Zuma’s family; especially coming from a past US presidency that kept African women in sexual bondage and enslaved their children whom Mr. Carson may be a descendant of. Is it fair for me to mention Mr. Clintons’ episodes?

Sexual affairs appears to be on his mind versus Secretary Carson’s no mention of the greatest event to occur on African soil; the 2010 FIFA World Soccer World Series in South Africa as a sign of progress.

This interview in my opinion was an excellent US security sales pitch for promoting security company contractors’ experimental scanner radiation x-ray machines. That the former U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Chertoff is now a board representative of this new scanning device should shock no one with common current event sense.

Assistant Secretary Johnnie Carson wants to install its US airline security system and sky marshals in Nigeria to assist Nigerian aviation and port security. Not a single word of Oil Marshals to marshal Western and American oil companies that has caused the havoc, corruption, and civil strife in Nigeria and the Niger. And, who has caused robbery of its citizens of billions of dollars in revenue.

The Niger and Nigerian crisis is oil generated and not a single Marshal to marshal corrupt oil companies who have left Nigeria in an "environmental disaster" and who is behind the corrupting of its officials.

Why not a single word on bringing Oil Companies to court and placing marshals in their board rooms.

Democracy is not the panacea for African because it is failing miserably in America unless its Chinese Democracy that the US is indebted to the tune of 1 trillion dollars.

Lloyd Whitefield Butler, Jr. Harlem, New York

Who, in 2010, is still talking about reparation this late in the game? It is about time people of African heritage stopped whining, as long as we can learn from the past and say Never Again in the future. This childish game of expecting the West to come solve local problem wherein they appoint African Elders (Carter, Mandela, Geldoff, Bono...) for diverse African cultures is insulting enough. In the process of high-schooling "Role Modeling,” they play one country against the other a la Ghana v Nigeria or Ethiopia v Somalia, Southern Sudan v Khartoum, or South Africa v Zimbabwe. Geez!! Africans can ill afford thse 18th century imperial tendencies as it moves deeper into the current century. In my humble opinion, the US did Africa a favor by classifying Nigeria with other terrorist nations; at least we know who our true friends are which led Nigerians to wizen up to buck the system with a new trend of using its internal resources, warts, and all, to solve its own political crises without resorting to violence. Rather than waiting for the Vultures (Kofi Annan & the UN) to come impose some unworkable GNU that eventually make things worse as we have seen in the Congo, Rwanda, Ivory Coast, Kenya, etc. Leave other African countries alone & see how they solve their problems the best way they know how - it may be painful to watch in the beginning. I believe that is the approach of Mr. Carson, which is refreshing. Ride on, brother.

Would you make the statement to World Jewelry or the American Jewish Congress or Israel when they demand and get reparations from Europe and America for crimes committed against their people? For example, the Jewish community successfully sued Spain for kicking out Spanish Jews and siezing their land in 1492. This is a recent event, Cornball.

Reparations is the legal most civilized methodology of repairing wrongs, atrocities, and theft committed against any entity. The Bilble is full of reparation acts of justice.

Your point is well taken but if Israel’s success in getting reparation from Europe for the holocaust of the 1940s is the yardstick for Africans to now seek their own reparation for 18th – 19th Century slavery; shouldn’t we have sought that reparation shortly after emancipation? Then the Israelites could also use African success today to seek reparation from the Egyptians for enslaving them until Moses liberated them. Then Slavs/Serbs would be equally justified to seek reparation from the Barbarians while the English seek their own from the Vikings, just as American Indians should seek reparation from American settlers, and so on, ad infinitum… Besides, how much $$$ would be enough and for how long would the Africans hold on to the $$$ b4 they swindle them out of it? Whatever happens to “never again” & leave Africans to solve their own problem rather than interfering, playing one against the other to make things worse? In my opinion, that is the greatest impediment to African peace & progress - something that money can't buy.