In honor of lying, murderous, thuggish, plundering, didn't-discover-a-damned thing Day...

I was re-reading Dr. John Henrik Clarke's, "Christopher Columbus and the Afrikan Holocaust:  Slavery and the Rise of European Capitalism" and I remembered I'd saved a video a while ago, based almost word-for-word on it:

Now, while I highly suggest you read this little, 109-page primer for the many other book titles he references, I can certainly understand if you'd prefer to listen to his highly entertaining and thought-provoking oratory (I know I do!) -- so here you go:



Though I've not yet paid written homage to my brothers and sisters in Ferguson, Missouri here (for a variety of reasons into which I will go in my next post), I hope they'll accept for now, my deepest and sincerest Solidarity, Love and Respect for what they are continuing to do, not only in Michael Brown's name -- but in mine.

I am SO damned humbled and extremely proud, because they've proven they understand exactly what Dr. Clarke so eloquently states between the 23:09 to the 23:21 click above:

"And you keep approaching someone, thinking somebody, out of their goodness, gon' give up something they took from you.  They took it from you, you got to take it back."

Okay, just in case Dr. Clarke wasn't enough, easily verifiable truth for you -- stay with me.  As a matter of fact -- just sit back, relax and hold the hell on, because Dr. Ivan Van Sertima's, "They Came Before Columbus" lecture, based on his book of the same name follows.  It should, at the very least, send your non-critically thinking minds into a tizzy and, at most -- awaken a thirst for some knowledge, NOT of European, la-la-land making (Bro. Amenta, I see you noddin' your head sayin', "Damn Deb!  That's all I was tryin' to tell you! :-D).  Enjoy, Family:



Related:
- Columbus gets his comeuppance: Why his holiday is in deep jeopardy
- Before Columbus: How Africans Brought Civilization to America
- North America is a crime scene: The untold history of America this Columbus Day

Albert Chinụalụmọgụ Achebe, 1930 - 2013

“I think it’s changed a bit. But not very much in its essentials. When I think of the standing, the importance and the erudition of all these people who see nothing about racism in Heart of Darkness, I’m convinced that we must really be living in different worlds. Anyway, if you don’t like someone’s story, you write your own. If you don’t like what somebody says, you say what it is you don’t like. Some people imagine that what I mean is, Don’t read Conrad. Good heavens, no! I teach Conrad. I teach Heart of Darkness. I have a course on Heart of Darkness in which what I’m saying is, Look at the way this man handles Africans. Do you recognize humanity there? People will tell you he was opposed to imperialism. But it’s not enough to say, I’m opposed to imperialism. Or, I’m opposed to these people—these poor people—being treated like this. Especially since he goes on straight away to call them “dogs standing on their hind legs.” That kind of thing. Animal imagery throughout. He didn’t see anything wrong with it. So we must live in different worlds. Until these two worlds come together we will have a lot of trouble.”

Chinua Achebe

Which is why we must continue to work, exceedingly hard at telling our own stories -- all of them.

The prolific, Nigerian novelist and educator, Chinua Achebe is now with the ancestors and I think it only fitting, to have the remarkable, young, Nigerian novelist, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie eulogize him. Read and enjoy her 2010 piece in Salon entitled, "Chinua Achebe: The man who rediscovered Africa":

When, in 1958, the London publishers William Heinemann received a manuscript of Chinua Achebe’s “Things Fall Apart,” they were unsure whether to publish it. The central question, according to editor Alan Hill, was this: “Would anyone possibly buy a novel by an African?” Not only were there a mere handful of examples of African writing in English at the time – such as Amos Tutuola’s surreal “The Palm-Wine Drinkard” and Cyprian Ekwensi’s novel of contemporary Lagos, “People of the City” – but none of them had the ambition, the subtlety, or the confidence of “Things Fall Apart.”

Chinua Achebe had initially conceived it as a story of three generations: a man in pre-colonial Igboland who struggles against the changes brought by the first European missionaries and administrators; his son who converts to Christianity and receives some Western education; and his grandson who is educated in England and is living the life of the new elite on the cusp of independence. Achebe later scaled down the novel, focusing only on the first generation, to produce a carefully observed story of the African-European colonial encounter set among the Igbo people of southeastern Nigeria in the 1890s, with the tragic hero Okonkwo at its center. Achebe’s second novel, “No Longer At Ease,” would skip a generation and tell the story of Okonkwo’s grandson, Obi, a civil servant in 1950s Lagos. His third novel, “Arrow of God,” about an Igbo priest and a British district officer in 1920s Igboland, can be read as representative of the times of Okonkwo’s son. All three novels, taken together as Achebe’s “African Trilogy,” create a full and beautifully nuanced arc, a human chronicle of the cultural and political changes that brought about what is now seen as the modern African state.

After William Heinemann overcame their reservations and published “Things Fall Apart” in June 1958, it became a critical success. Achebe, the Times Literary Supplement wrote, had “genuinely succeeded in presenting tribal life from the inside.” A novelty indeed. “Things Fall Apart” was pioneering not in its subject but in its African point of view, as there were already many well-regarded books about Africans written by non-Africans; tribal life had already been endlessly portrayed from the outside. Achebe himself first read some of the better-known examples of these “colonialism classics” as a secondary school student in the 1940s. “I did not see myself as an African to begin with,” he has written about his response to the African characters. “I took sides with the white men against the savages. The white man was good and reasonable and intelligent and courageous. The savages arrayed against him were sinister and stupid or, at the most, cunning. I hated their guts.” As Achebe matured and became more critical in his reading, he began to understand the enormous power that stories had, and how much this power was shaped by who told the stories and by how they were told. As a university student in the 1950s, in addition to reading Wordsworth, Shakespeare and Coleridge, Achebe also read Joyce Carey’s “Mister Johnson,” a novel set in Nigeria, which Time magazine had named the “best book ever written about Africa.” Achebe disagreed. Not only was the Nigerian character in the novel unrecognizable to him and his classmates but he also detected, in the description of Nigerians, “an undertow of uncharitableness … a contagion of distaste, hatred, and mockery.”

There has been much written about Chinua Achebe’s “Things Fall Apart” as a response to Mister Johnson, and one likes to think that Achebe would have written his novel even if he had not read Cary’s. Still, the prejudiced representation of African characters in literature could not but have had an influence on Achebe’s development as a writer. He would, years later, write a famous essay about the portrayal of Africans in Joseph Conrad’s classic novel “Heart of Darkness,” arguing not that Conrad should not have written honestly about the racism of the time, but that Conrad failed to hold an authorial rejection of that worldview.

The strangeness of seeing oneself distorted in literature – and indeed of not seeing oneself at all – was part of my own childhood. I grew up in the Nigerian university town of Nsukka in the 1980s, reading a lot of British children’s books. My early writing mimicked the books I was reading: all my characters were white and all my stories were set in England. Then I read “Things Fall Apart.” It was a glorious shock of discovery, as was “Arrow of God,” which I read shortly afterwards; I did not know in a concrete way until then that people like me could exist in literature. Here was a book that was unapologetically African, that was achingly familiar, but that was, also, exotic because it detailed the life of my people a hundred years before. Because I was educated in a Nigerian system that taught me little of my pre-colonial past, because I could not, for example, imagine with any accuracy how life had been organized in my part of the world in 1890, Achebe’s novels became strangely personal. “Things Fall Apart” was no longer a novel about a man whose exaggerated masculinity and encompassing fear of weakness make it impossible for him to adapt to the changes in his society, it became the life my great-grandfather might have lived. “Arrow of God” was no longer just about the British administration’s creation of warrant chiefs, and the linked destinies of two men – one an Igbo priest the other a British administrator – it became the story of my ancestral hometown during my grandfather’s time. “And No Longer at Ease” transcended the story of an educated young Nigerian struggling with the pressure of new urban expectations in Lagos, and became the story of my father’s generation.

Later, as an adult confronting the portrayals of Africa in non-African literature – Africa as a place without history, without humanity, without hope – and filled with that peculiar sense of defensiveness and vulnerability that comes with knowing that your humanity is seen as negotiable, I would turn again to Achebe’s novels. In the stark, sheer poetry of “Things Fall Apart,” in the humor and complexity of “Arrow of God,” I found a gentle reprimand: Don’t you dare believe other people’s stories of you.

Considering the time and circumstances under which he wrote, perhaps Chinua Achebe sensed that his work would become, for a generation of Africans, both literature and history. He has written that he would be satisfied if his novels did no more than teach his readers that their past “was not one long night of savagery from which the first Europeans acting on God’s behalf delivered them.” He has, on occasion, adopted a somewhat anthropological voice in his fiction: “Fortunately among these people,” we are told in “Things Fall Apart,” “a man was judged according to his worth and not according to the worth of his father.” But what is remarkable is that Achebe’s art never sinks under this burden of responsibility. A reader expecting to find simple answers in Chinua Achebe’s work will be disappointed, because he is a writer who embraces honesty and ambiguity and who complicates every situation. His criticism of the effects of colonialism on the Igbo is implicit, but so is his interrogation of the internal structure of Igbo society. When Nwoye, Okonkwo’s son in “Things Fall Apart,” breaks away from his family and community to join the Christians, it is a victory for the Europeans but also a victory for Nwoye, who finds peace and an outlet for deep disillusions he had long been nursing about his people’s traditions. When a character says, “The White man is very clever. He came quietly and peaceably with his religion. We were amused at his foolishness and allowed him to stay. Now he has won our brothers and our clan can no longer act as one. He has put a knife on the things that held us together and we have fallen apart,” the reader is aware that Achebe’s narrative is as much about the knife as it is about the vulnerabilities, the internal complexities, the cracks that already existed.

Achebe writes spare, elegant sentences in English but it is a Nigerian English and often, more specifically, an Igbo English. All three novels are filled with direct translations from the Igbo, resulting in expressions like “still carrying breakfast” and “what is called ‘the box is moving?’” as well as in laugh-out-loud lines, especially for an Igbo-speaking reader, like “the white man whose father or mother nobody knows.” It is, however, the rendition of proverbs, of speech, of manners of speaking, that elevate Achebe’s novels into a celebration of language. In “Arrow of God,” for example, Ezeulu eloquently captures his own cautious progressiveness when he tells his son whom he has decided to send to the missionary school: “I am like the bird eneke-nti-oba. When his friends asked him why he was always on the wing he replied: men of today have learnt to shoot without missing and so I have learnt to fly without perching…the world is like a Mask dancing. If you want to see it well you do not stand in one place.”

Achebe takes his characters seriously but not too seriously; he finds subtly subversive ways to question them and even laugh at them, and he refuses to rescue them from their foibles. Okonkwo, perhaps the best-known character in modern African writing in English, is the quintessential Strong Man, and is ruled by a profound fear that blinds him. His insecurities result in a relentless harshness and an extremist view of masculinity – he is so terrified of being thought weak that he destroys a person he loves and yet the reader empathizes with his remorse, repressed as it is.

It is impossible, especially for the contemporary reader, not to be struck by the portrayal of gender in “Things Fall Apart,” and the equating of weakness and inability with femaleness. More interesting, however, and perhaps more revealing, are the subtle ways in which Achebe interrogates this patriarchy: Okonkwo denigrates women and yet the child he most respects is his daughter Ezinma, the only character who dares to answer back to him and who happens to be confident and forthright in a way that his male children are not. My favorite part of the novel, and a small part indeed, is the love story of the old couple Ozoemena and Ndulue. When Ndulue dies, his wife Ozoemena goes to his hut to see his body and then goes into her own hut and is later found dead there. Okonkwo’s friend Obierika recalls, “It was always said that Ndulue and Ozoemena had one mind. I remember when I was a young boy and there was a song about them. He could not do anything without telling her.” This recollection troubles Okonkwo because, in his eyes, it casts doubts on Ndulue’s authentic masculinity. He says, “I thought he was a strong man in his youth.” The others agree that Ndulue was a strong man and had led the clan to war in those days. They do not see, as Okonkwo obviously does, a contradiction between the old man’s greatness in the realm of masculinity and his mutually dependent relationship with his wife.

It is this rigidity of Okonkwo’s, in addition to his uncompromising nature, his rashness, his excesses, for which the reader feels impatience. Yet, when placed in the context of the many small humiliations of the colonial encounter, his actions become worthy of empathy. The power structures of his society have been so easily overturned. Okonkwo is left struggling to understand a world in which the dignity he had always taken for granted has disappeared, in which elders are treated with scorn and he, proud warrior that he is, is flogged by agents of the District commissioner. The reader is moved to understand the helpless rage, and final violent actions, that are Okonkwo’s response to the enormous, and perhaps baffling, political and economic power that came with Christianity and Colonialism. We are left, in the end, with an unforgettable tragic character: a man who is gravely flawed but who has also been gravely wronged.

Ezeulu, the character at the center of “Arrow of God,” which remains my favorite novel, is both flawed and wronged like Okonkwo, and is also held captive by what he imagines his society expects of him. Unlike Okonkwo, a character who was clearly in Achebe’s control, Ezeulu is wondrously unwieldy and his deep complexity lends “Arrow of God” much of its enduring power. I suspect that, as happens in the best fiction, Chinua Achebe did not have complete control over this character; ultimately the spirit of Ezeulu dictated how his story would be told. “Arrow of God” is told from the points of view of both Ezeulu and the British district commissioner Winterbottom; when the novel begins, the central event has already occurred, much like a Greek drama, and what Achebe explores is the aftermath. Ezeulu has testified against his own people in a land case with the neighboring town, because he is determined to speak the truth, and this action has earned him the respect of the district officer the as well as the ire of his local opponents. It will also act as a catalyst that – added to Ezeulu’s stubborness, his idealism, his pride – will contribute to his tragic end.

Like “Things Fall Apart,” “Arrow of God” shows the angry helplessness of people in the face of formalized European power: powerful men are treated with scorn by government agents, great men are flogged, the justice system is replaced by one the people do not understand and do not have a say in, and the internal dynamics of the society is turned around.

In “No Longer at Ease,” however, this helplessness is replaced by something inchoate but less suffocating, because the terms have changed during the short-lived optimism of independence. Obi, struggling with the pressures of the new Nigerian society, captures this change when he thinks of his boss the Englishman Mr. Green, who he is sure “loved Africa but only Africa of a certain kind: the Africa of Charles the messenger, the Africa of his gardenboy and stewardboy. In 1900 Mr Green might have ranked among the greatest missionaries, in 1935 he would have made do with slapping headmasters in the presence of their pupils, but in 1957 he could only curse and swear.”

Achebe writes in the realist tradition and there are often traces of the autobiographical in his work. He was born in 1930 in the Igbo town of Ogidi, southeastern Nigeria. His parents were firm Christians but many of his relatives had retained the Igbo religion and so he grew up a witness to both sides of his heritage and, more importantly, a recipient of stories from both. Influences of his great-uncle, a wealthy and important man who had allowed the first missionaries to stay in his compound but later asked them to leave because he found their music too sad, are obvious in “Things Fall Apart.” He worked as a radio producer in Lagos in the 1950s and the details of this life – film shows and clubs and bars, observing formerly expatriate clubs that were now admitting a few Nigerians – give “No Longer at Ease” its verisimilitude. It was through a radio program that Achebe heard the story of an Igbo priest in a nearby town who, as a result of a number of events with the British administration, had postponed the sacred New Yam festival, which had never been done before. He decided to go and visit this town and the story inspired “Arrow of God.”

All of Achebe’s work is, in some way, about strong communitarian values, the use of language as collective art, the central place of storytelling and the importance of symbolic acts and objects in keeping a community together. The American writer John Updike, after reading “Arrow of God,” wrote to Achebe to say that a western writer would not have allowed the destruction of a character as rich as Ezeulu. This is debatable, but perhaps what Updike had understood was that Achebe was as much concerned with a person as he was with a people, an idea well captured in the proverb that a character in Arrow of God recites: “An animal rubs its itching flank against a tree, but a man asks his kinsman to scratch him.” (all emphasis mine)

I've only read "Things Fall Apart" but, I'll certainly read the rest of the trilogy.  Because,  just as I felt when my high school English teacher, Mrs. Alfreda Jenkins, fed our young, Black minds (thirsting for voices and experiences that sounded like our own) with all those wonderful voices of the Harlem Renaissance and beyond, my old-assed mind, right now, today -- still thirsts for those ancestral voices about whom Achebe wrote, voices which a lot of us would rather deny, or worse yet, hope would disappear.

Related:
- Author Chinua Achebe dies at 82
- Nigerian Writer Chinua Achebe, Author of ‘Things Fall Apart’, Dead at 82
- Chinua Achebe at 82: “We Remember Differently,” By Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
- Chinua Achebe Biography

Nkrumah's, "Challenge of the Congo" an instructive read for the Black Diaspora

"Since CHALLENGE OF THE CONGO was first published in 1967, conflict between progressive and reactionary forces in Africa has sharpened. A point has now been reached where armed struggle is the only way through which African revolutionaries can achieve their objectives. Recent events in Africa have exposed the fallacy of trying to banish imperialism, neocolonialism and settler regimes from our continent by peaceful means. The aggression of the enemies of the African masses continues, and has become more ruthless and insidious. The evidence is all around us."

Kwame Nkrumah -- "Challenge of the Congo" (Conakry, 1 June 1969)

Due in large part to Sis. Affiong's insistence here, I'm finally reading Kwame Nkrumah's, "Challenge of the Congo." It took a little while to locate, but I got it right after I got back from home (which is why I haven't finished that post yet, Amenta!).

But it's a slow read for me because, while the overwhelming depravity and machinations of these self-described, supposedly "civilized" white folk is not surprising, it does tend to conjure up an inordinate amount of anger and yes -- pain, so I have to keep putting it down.  I came across the documentary, "The Assassination of Patrice Lumumba" last night and decided to watch it during one of those reading breaks. Difficult to watch (for a myriad of reasons), but I'm glad I did.  I'm sure it'll help me better focus on what I'm still reading.

Embedding is disabled by request so I can't post it here, but please, if you have 45 minutes, do go to YouTube and watch it. The hubris, barbarity and detachment, with which these murderers discuss Lumumba's death, coupled with their perceived, God-given right to control the world -- is sickening. However, it's also extremely illustrative of the days in which we currently live, where the "usual suspects" are continuing to do what they've always done.

More Nkrumah:

"We must combine strategy and tactics, and establish political and military machinery for the prosecution of the African revolutionary war.  It is only in this way that the aspirations of the African masses can be achieved, and an All-African Union Government be established in a totally free and united Africa."

Family, if we are to culturally survive as a people (some of us are already too far gone), we have GOT to wake the hell up and stop our complicity in this madness and concentrate -- on us! As Nkrumah said, "The evidence is all around us."

Related:
- NEW REVELATIONS POINTS TO THE HAND OF THE bRITS IN THE MURDER OF PATRICE LUMUMBA
- Kimani Gray
- No Country for young, Black men...
- Ramarley Graham
- Sean Bell
- The NYPD Declares Martial Law in Brooklyn

"500 Years Later" -- let's seriously consider the journey

I realize today's the "Big Game," but it won't be on all day!  Carve out a little time to watch this very interesting 2005 documentary.  The commercials are annoying but, in a weird way, they reinforce the story being told.  Just click "No" on each one and keep it movin'!  I think it'd be well worth it.  Then, if you like -- let's talk:

Black Agenda Report's Glen Ford -- "We have Learned who is For Real and who is Frontin'."

In the tradition of (in no particular order) -- Garvey, Toussaint, Lumumba, the real -- Toure, Nkrumah, Winnie, Nat Turner, Martin, A. Philip Randolph, Septima Clarke, Romare Bearden, SNCC, Malcolm, Huey, Fred Hampton, Mumia, Assata, the revolutionary -- Angela; Harlem Renaissance writers and agitators (to name a few) -- Claude McKay, James Baldwin, Lorraine Hansberry, Richard Wright, Langston Hughes, Franz Fanon, Paul Laurence Dunbar, James Weldon Johnson, Ralph Ellison, W.E.B. DuBois, Zora Neale Hurston, Gwendolyn Brooks, Hubert Harrison, the pre-capitalist -- Ms. Angelou; Ida B. Wells, Paul Robeson, Drs. -- John Henrik Clarke, Ben Jochannan, John G. Jackson; George Padmore, Eric Williams, Egyptian hieroglyphics (yes, Egypt is in Africa); Tupac, KRS One, DeadPrez, Bob Marley, Lupe -- and the list goes on and on... Glen stands for something, rather than falling for anything.

What about you, Family?

Related:
- Scholars Attribute Institutional Racism to Economic Disparity
- It’s Good to Be a Goldman

From Côte d'Ivoire, to Libya, to Mali -- the FUKUS "War on Terror" in Africa, nothing but neocolonialism run amok

As the "usual suspects" (France, the UK and the US) continue their neocolonial incursions into Africa for land, resources and veritable world domination -- the string-pullers prepare for the master distraction of the Puppet-in-Chief's second coronation.

And, as has been the case for his first four years, no "Black Agenda" will be realized anywhere in the world during the next four, if we can't come together and at least --

1. Stop dreamily training our eyes and minds on the Changeling; 
2. Realize our combined "strength-in-numbers" across the diaspora and in Africa;
3. Stop living the definition of insanity (doing the same things over and over again and expecting different results) and, 
4. Begin to understand and recognize the patterns of imperialism which, today, manifest themselves as neocolonialism.

The following video from GlobalResearchTV is a start.  Here in the intro, some of the patterns from the assaults on both, Côte d'Ivoire and Libya are readily apparent:

Henningsen: Mali War Retaliation: World Police Protecting Corporate Interests in Africa

35 foreign hostages held captive at a gas field in Algeria have reportedly been killed in the operation to free them. 15 of the captors are also thought to have died, some people are apparently still being held. The local media suggests Algerian forces attacked a convoy of kidnappers and captives from the air.

Militants first attacked the complex on Wednesday, killing at least two of the staff and seizing dozens. The hostage-takers were demanding an end to the French-led combat action against insurgents in neighboring Mali. And there, the operation has intensified.

French troops are now on the ground in support of a heavy air campaign against Al-Qaeda-linked groups. The army has also received logistical support from its NATO allies, while the EU is preparing to send hundreds of military personnel to train the Malian army. (emphasis mine).

Those who make peaceful revolution impossible, will make violent revolution inevitable.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

from, "Beyond Vietnam -- A Time to Break Silence"

Delivered April 4 1967

Given what is now transpiring in Algeria and Mali, it's quite obvious that Dr. King, among other true, leaders dedicated to our self-determination, had long ago been prescient about these exact outcomes.  The revolutionary, African leader of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah, even more so.

Nkrumah's spirit looms large in the person of Sister Affiong L. Affiong, co-founder of the Pan-African Women's Network Moyo wa Taifa and Executive Director of the Moyo Solidarity Centre based in the UK and Ghana.  I first heard this sister speak on this Sons of Malcolm post.  There, as in the video below, she not only fervently address the patterns of imperialism and neocolonialism, she vociferously calls for the identical solutions to combat them, as articulated by Nkrumah, Lumumba, Malcom and Garvey -- Pan-Africanism.  Do listen carefully, as the sound is not the best:



Dr. John Henrik Clark instructs here that:

"...the Black Race did not come to the United States culturally empty-handed...During the period in West African history -- from the early part of the fourteenth century to the time of the Moorish invasion in 1591, the City of Timbuktu, with the University of Sankore in the Songhay Empire, was the intellectual center of Africa."

The neocolonialist-backed insurgents in Mali have all but erased the great historical ruins of the "The El Dorado of Africa" with the help of imperialism -- I have to wonder if it was by design.

Instead of reading the daily diet of MSM propaganda on Mali, please check out the links below (from bottom-to-top) for a clearer picture of the ongoing recolonization of The Continent.

UPDATE:  Family, this primer (from my favorite source of non-MSM, unbiased information, "The Roving Eye," Pepe Escobar) is instructive of the depths to which FUKUS has gone, and will continue to go, to remain true -- to that aptly coined acronym, in Africa.  A bit long, but well worth the read.

Related:
- Mauritanian Consensus Against French Intervention in Mali
-'THE WAR IS IN MALI, THE TARGET IS ALGERIA' - ABDEL BARI ATWAN
-The Geopolitical Reordering of Africa: US Covert Support to Al Qaeda in Northern Mali, France “Comes to the Rescue”
- Tomgram: Nick Turse, America's Shadow Wars in Africa
- Namibian Government Blames NATO for Mali Unrest
- The Son of Africa claims a continent’s crown jewels

"Blacks Without Borders" -- the Pan-Africanism about which Malcolm spoke?

"Imagine, Affimative Action -- with teeth."

(I can just see my brother, Asa, shaking his head in the affirmative right now!)
















I think capitalism is a boil on the ass of human-kind, particularly since our Black bodies played such a large part in its birth and growth here in America.  However, this, is certainly what I thought we would do with it -- either here, or on The Continent if that's what we wanted to do (because I had, and still have no doubt, that we could!).

It seems these brothers and sisters took what they learned about it and went back home -- giving back, as they continue to prosper.  And as much as I hate that boil, I just can't be mad at them for that (okay, I gotta admit, the diamond trader did make me uncomfortable, because I immediately thought about -- conflict/blood diamonds, who owns the mines, who's doing the mining and under what conditions.  But, I can't ignore how she's not only ensured that African talent benefits from what she does, but that our African cultural heritage is at the forefront of her work as well).

Watching this documentary tonight, I'm once again reminded of Alex Raventhorne's comment on "...and yet they wonder why POC emigrate" over At the Bar:

"Stay where you are celebrated, reconsider where you are tolerated, and flee where you are persecuted."

Think about it Family...

The Newtown massacre: crocodile tears, a culture of violence, the hierarchy of human life and -- possible politricks

"People who treat other people as less than human, must not be surprised when the bread they have cast on the waters comes floating back to them, poisoned."

James Baldwin

It's amazing how Mr. Baldwin's words, always succinctly capture what I'm thinking.  No matter which meme blanketing the internet into which you buy, the real reasons for the undoubtedly disturbing shootings in Connecticut will, most definitely relate to Baldwin's words.  More disturbing though, were the Changeling's words on Friday (delivered while wiping away tears that I, at least, could not see), along with his follow-up, hypocritical "performance,"  in Newton on Sunday.  And what stellar performances they both were (I won't bother posting the videos.  I'm sure the whole world's seen them both)!

I've been trying to write this post on the shootings since Saturday, but for some reason, I just couldn't get through it (too many glaringly, contrasting thoughts running through my head).  But I was reading about it all, voraciously -- so much so that, rather than y'all listening to my droning, I've been able to knit together an expression of exactly how I feel, through what I've read.  Here's what I came up with:

Lucinda Marshall's,  "A Culture That Condones The Killing Of Children And Teaches Children To Kill:

"The Sandy Hook massacre isn’t just about the need for gun control laws, it is about a culture that condones the killing of children and teaches children that killing is okay."

Ye-e-e-p, she's right on the money there.  I stumbled upon a six-part series on You Tube awhile ago entitled, "Violence:  An American Tradition."  It shows, quite uncompromisingly, how this country's culture of violence -- since its founding -- absolutely confirms Ms. Marshall's statement.  I'm only posting Part 1 - but as the disclaimer says on each part, "Caution:  Contains scenes that may be disturbing to young or sensitive viewers" -- because it, and the other four parts linked here -- are not for the faint of heart!:



Arthur Silber's, God Damn You, America, and Your White, Privileged Grief is one of the closest renditions of my thought, ever.  While there's one section of his post, with which I totally disagree, I can't, not post this:

We've had Cool Obama, and No Drama Obama. Now we have Weeping Obama. Does Weeping Obama "meet privately" with the families of those he has ordered murdered in Pakistan, or Somalia, or Yemen? Does he even acknowledge those murders -- murders that he himself ordered? Does the "nation reel" in response to these regular, systematic murders of innocent human beings -- many of them children? Does the "nation reel" in response to the Obama administration's repeated public announcements of its Kill List and its Murder Program, a program which intentionally, repeatedly murders innocent people? Does America react with horror to the fact that Obama and his administration claim the "right" to murder anyone they want, anywhere in the world, for any reason they choose or invent out of nothing? (emphasis mine)

I'll save my one point of disagreement with Arthur for a later post, because for me -- it requires a "writing about," all its own (and I won't even tell you what part it is right now).  That said, he knocks it out of the damned park on everything else IMO.

This, "Child Casualties as a Result of U.S. Drone Attacks" video, embedded in Glenn Greenwald's, Newtown kids v Yemenis and Pakistanis: what explains the disparate reactions? -- is a stark reminder of the "hierachy of human life" being practiced by many, if not most, of my countrymen:

There's just no denying that many of the same people understandably expressing such grief and horror over the children who were killed in Newtown steadfastly overlook, if not outright support, the equally violent killing of Yemeni and Pakistani children. Consider this irony: Monday was the three-year anniversary of President Obama's cruise missile and cluster-bomb attack on al-Majala in Southern Yemen that ended the lives of 14 women and 21 children: one more child than was killed by the Newtown gunman. In the US, that mass slaughter received not even a small fraction of the attention commanded by Newtown, and prompted almost no objections (in predominantly Muslim nations, by contrast, it received ample attention and anger).

It is well worth asking what accounts for this radically different reaction to the killing of children and other innocents. Relatedly, why is the US media so devoted to covering in depth every last detail of the children killed in the Newtown attack, but so indifferent to the children killed by its own government? (emphasis mine)

If these strikes are as precise, as surgical, as targeted, as the voices of both Panetta and the Changeling adamantly proclaim in the background, what does that say about them, seeing there's more than ample evidence to the contrary?  I don't know about you, but I say they're both -- bald-faced liars.

Next, Khadija Patel of South Africa's, Daily Maverick gave me one helluva V-8 moment about "hierarchy of human life" here, in her, From Gaza to the Congo: Whose blood is more worthy of attention? (do click on her name and read her mini-bio -- gotta love it!):

Three years on, I no longer lay claim to sanity – I sleep too little to qualify – but these same niggling questions about a jaundiced media focus are spilling out in heated verbiage across the world. And it says something about our collective failure as a world that three years on we’re once more talking about Gaza and Goma. These things really do go on and on and on.

On Sunday, British columnist Ian Birrell noted that coverage of the recent conflict in Gaza had eclipsed another deadly conflict happening simultaneously in the eastern Congo.

Birrell described the Democratic Republic of Congo as a “scene of massacres, of mass rape, of children forced to fight, of families fleeing in fear again and again, so many sordid events that rarely make the headlines.”

“It can seem a conflict of crushing complexity rooted in thorny issues of identity and race, involving murderous militias with an alphabet of acronyms and savagely exploited by grasping outsiders. But consider one simple fact: right now, there is the risk of another round breaking out in the deadliest conflict since the Second World War,” he wrote.

Birrell is not alone in his sombre assessment. Others describe the situation in eastern Congo as “the greatest humanitarian crisis in the world today.” The charge of a lack of media attention is also not unfounded. Since 1999, when Doctors without Borders first began issuing its top 10 underreported humanitarian crises in the world, the DRC has featured nearly every year.

Just over one week of bombing in Gaza and everybody was up in arms. There were rallies and protests right across the world. In the media, pages and pages of reportage, analyses and testimony. Hundreds of journalists made the trip into Gaza to record first-hand the death and destruction. Together with them, the reports of ordinary Palestinians on social media lent us some clues of the scale of human tragedy unfolding in the homes, the media offices and the refugee camps in Gaza.

And then there’s the Congo...

Two of my friends are currently tramping around Goma wielding recorders and cameras, doing their bit to bring the crisis there to the attention of the world. It’s not that what’s happening there is going altogether unreported. All the major wires carry updates on the situation several times a day. The crisis is certainly not being ignored. It just is not exciting the same kind of fevered attention that Gaza did.

When superstorm Sandy ripped through the Caribbean and then the east coast of the US last month, many media analysts complained that coverage of the hurricane was overwhelmingly skewed in favour of how it affected Americans. No matter that people in Cuba and Haiti as equal citizens of the world also braced the hurricane and also suffered loss and a disruption to their lives, it was the effect of the storm on the US that filled the world’s media. Some analysts and observers of American dominance on the rest of us meek creatures used the asymmetry in media coverage of the storm in the US and outside as the US as proof of the warped focus of global media. (emphasis mine)

It is important that I own my own complicity in not talking about what's happening to people who look like me in the DRC.  All of my writing, with the exception of my limited coverage of Cote d'Ivoire, and the Marikana massacres, have had nothing to do with Congo.  But I have written about pseudo-sister, Susan Rice, so I don't feel too bad. The one statement Rice made, as Slick Willy's Under Secretary of State for African Affairs which forever rests in the nether reaches of my consciousness, is one Glen Ford of Black Agenda Report nails right here:

“We say hands off Ambassador Susan Rice!” Dr. Ron Daniels’ Institute of the Black World, a proudly Afro-centric organization, would do better to demand that Rice and the rest of the Obama administration keep their bloody hands off Africa. Republicans are “hypocrites “ who “have no moral or political authority to stand in judgment of Ambassador Susan Rice!” One can make that argument, but the Institute of the Black World and the rest of us certainly have the right and obligation to stand in judgment of a political operative and ideologue who, according to an article by Michael Hirsch in the Ethiopian Review, cavalierly dismissed the Rwanda/Uganda-sponsored M23 rebel group’s murderous rampages in the Democratic Republic of Congo. “It’s the eastern DRC. If it’s not M23, it’s going to be some other group.”  Rice delayed for months publication of a United Nations panel of experts report documenting M23 as a front group for Congo’s neighbors, who have all but annexed the mineral-rich eastern part of the country since invading in 1996, leaving 6 million dead in their wake, half of them below the age of five. Rice and her then boss, Bill Clinton, supplied the money, arms and political cover. As Under Secretary of State for African Affairs, Rice left it up to Washington’s Rwandan and Ugandan puppets to safeguard against genocide. “They know how to deal with that,” Rice is quoted as saying. “The only thing we have to do is look the other way.”

Rice’s African American boosters also choose to look the other way. They shame us all." (emphasis mine)

'Nuf said.

H/T to Sis Carolyn over at Perspectives -- Another Way to View for this great piece by Sikhvu Hutchinson -- Nice White Boys Next Door and Mass Murder:

“Standing in line at the California Science Center the day of the mass murder at Sandy Hook Elementary school, my students wondered aloud about the race of the shooter. More than likely he was white,” they agreed. As the only people of color waiting to be admitted to the exhibit, their open question about race elicited visible unease from a group of elderly white women across the line from us.

In high school when my friends and I found ourselves at the business end of Inglewood PD officers’ rifles because someone in our car “looked” like a burglary suspect, it was a rite of passage initiation...

But contrary to the rap stereotype of Glock-toting men of color, an overwhelming majority of people of color are pro-gun control, while the majority of the white electorate is not. The high school assailants in the Littleton, Colorado, the Jonesboro, Arkansas; and Santee, California shootings were steeped in a NRA besotted gun culture that fetishizes readily available firearms as the ultimate medium for violent white masculinity.

However, these youth were instantly transformed into symbols of troubled, tragically “misunderstood” teens. National conversations about the perils of bullying dominated the airwaves. It was accepted that these tragic figures were “our boys,” our recklessly wasted youth. It was conventional wisdom that preventive mental health resources could have minimized their inner turmoil. As the bloggers Three Sonorans note in their piece, “White Privilege and Mass Murder in America,” “whenever white men commit mass murders it is just a freak isolated incident, but when we look at other crime statistics for minorities the reason given is that it is something innate to their culture, to their family. It is those people.”

With Columbine there was tacit understanding that these boys’ acts were symptomatic of a potentially imperiled national heritage. Conversely, any time violence erupts in a black or Latino context it’s a racial indictment, an indictment of a community, not a reflection on the rogue acts of lost boys from salt of the earth homes.

As my students and I left the Science center, bracing for more news about the scope of the attack, it was clear that the tragedy would dominate the news for weeks to come. The senseless slaughter of children from the “perfect” town may finally prompt serious bipartisan legislation to curb the barbaric gun lobby. But it will not prompt analysis of the violent masculinity at the heart of whiteness. And if any of these nice white boy shooters had been black the national sentiment would have echoed the biting comment made by my student Jamion: “Send those niggers back to Africa.” (emphasis mine)

Biting is right, and totally on-point IMHO.

On a final note, as I talked to my youngest about the shootings during "family dinner time" last Sunday,  he told me about this -- Libor scandal grows as the fathers of two mass murderers were to testify:

One interesting connection to the tragedy that took place at the Sandy Hook school is that the father of Adam Lanza has a connection to the theater shootings that took place in Aurora earlier this year by James Holmes.

Both fathers of the shooters were allegedly expected to testify in the Libor scandal that rocked the banking world in June.

The father of Newtown Connecticut school shooter Adam Lanza is Peter Lanza who is a VP and Tax Director at GE Financial. The father of Aurora Colorado movie theater shooter James Holmes is Robert Holmes, the lead scientist for the credit score company FICO. Both men were to testify before the US Sentate in the ongoing LIBOR scandal. The London Interbank Offered Rate, known as Libor, is the average interest rate at which banks can borrow from each other. 16 international banks have been implicated in this ongoing scandal, accused of rigging contracts worth trillions of dollars. HSBC has already been fined $1.9 billion and three of their low level traders arrested. (emphasis and interior link on HSBC mine)

While I knew about the Libor scandal, I wasn't aware of any connection whatsoever to either the Aurora or Newton massacres (funny how you think your kids aren't really paying attention to what's going on in the world in which they live -- but they are).  I told him I knew there was a reason I couldn't get this post finished, and this unknown information was probably why!

This story hasn't been officially investigated -- and why would it, if it is, in fact true? After all, the Changeling's appointment of GE's CEO, Jeffrey Immelt to lead his new Council on Jobs and Competitiveness would certainly nip any meaningful digging by the MSM in the bud, no?

I just have to say that I don't believe in coincidences.  And while I still haven't found any smoking guns, the fact that Nancy Lanza had also been previously employed -- on Wall Street, coupled with this, most interesting fact pointed out by commenter, Peter Hyoguchi in the afore-linked piece that:

"Three of Peter Lanza's financial associates from GE Capitol headed to prison because of this fraud. Why would Peter Lanza not be called to testify? James Holmes' father designed the software that assesses national credit scores which is the focus of this Federal trial so why would he not be called to testify? It's unlikely just a coincidence."

Adding to that -- there were, in fact, hearings scheduled (and had) in Congress regarding America's involvement in the Libor scandal (neither Holmes, nor Lanza mentioned, far as I can see)!  Hell, despite the fact that it all may sound circumstantial,  it's certainly enough to have me scratching my head about the murders in both, Aurora and Newton.

Yes, the Changeling has quite a few things regarding human life about which he needs to sincerely squeeze out a tear or two, but I won't hold my breath that he will.  Why?  Because he's a perfectly cast, risk-averse, deus ex machina who always sticks to the dog-whistling, photo-op script he's been given.

Related:
- UBS Libor-rigging settlement exposes pervasive bank fraud
- In the US, mass child killings are tragedies. In Pakistan, mere bug splats
- Sen. Boxer Proposes Putting National Guard Troops in Schools
- Mayor wants cops in North Charleston elementary schools
- Gun rights advocates: Arm our teachers to help stop school shootings
- Gun sales surge after Connecticut massacre

Glen Ford -- "making it plain"

Please, follow the source link to the podcast and hear views rarely shared in the MSM.

Related:
Humanitarian Coverup: Why is Obama Silent Over the New Congo War?

Namibia's Herero and Nama debunk the "single story" of 'Holocaust', exposing white supremacy's collusion to exclude

I think it's safe to say, that most of our knowledge of holocaust and reparations comes from the "single story" of Germany and the Jews.  But, as stated in the following introductory piece by Abagond:

"People who blame the Jewish Holocaust on Hitler and the Nazis alone need to think again: Germany showed itself to be a genocidal nation when Hitler was just 15."

Quiet as it's kept, the Jews were neither the first, nor the only people to suffer Germany's greed and insecurity-induced, depravity.  Their first victims?  The Herero and Nama peoples of Namibia.

Do stay with me as Abagond educates, with some African history that has been all but buried amidst the collusion of white supremacy.

~#~

Cross-posted with permission, from Abagond:

The Herero and Nama genocide

Thu 26 Jul 2012 by abagond

The fortunate ones: Herero who escaped the German genocide, c. 1907

The Herero and Nama genocide (1904-1908) was carried out by Germany in South West Africa, now called Namibia. It killed 60,000 Hereros and 10,000 Nama, 50% to 70% of them. It featured concentration camps, skin-and-bone people, mass graves, medical experiments and good German record-keeping – more than 30 years before the Jewish Holocaust.

People who blame the Jewish Holocaust on Hitler and the Nazis alone need to think again: Germany showed itself to be a genocidal nation when Hitler was just 15.

There is no guesswork about this being a genocide: we have the orders, the letters and the diaries that leave no doubt that the Germans meant to wipe out the Herero and Nama and take their land. It was not just a case of a general gone mad or a war gone wrong.

present-day Herero woman, 2010

In the late 1800s there were 80,000 Herero and 20,000 Nama. Both had land and they herded cows. The Herero were Bantu and lived in the middle of Namibia, the Nama were Khoisan (Hottentots) and lived to the south. They were armed with rifles.

The Germans were badly outnumbered and outgunned. They were in constant fear of an uprising, which in turn put the Herero in constant fear that war was about to break out. And so it did in 1904.

At first the Herero were winning: the Germans were not just outgunned, but the governor was away in the south fighting the Nama.

General Lothar von Trotha

Germany, afraid of losing face, sent General Lothar von Trotha with men, cannons and machine guns – weapons the Herero had no defence against.

The Herero were defeated and massacred at the Battle of Waterberg. Most Herero escaped and fled across the desert to British Bechuanaland (Botswana), men, women, children and cows. The German army pursued. Only 1,000 Herero made it across the border to British territory. The rest died of thirst or were gunned down by the Germans. It was senseless and gruesome but when questioned Von Trotha said he wanted their “total extermination”.

Von Trotha was a dark angel of Darwin:

Where the climate allows the white man to work, philanthropic views cannot banish Darwin’s law “Survival of the Fittest”.

The Nama were next. They fought a hit-and-run guerrilla war. The Germans fought back by burning down all their houses and granaries.

Studies on Nama, Herero and mulattoes at the camps supported German ideas about race and genocide. About 3,000 skulls were sent to Germany for further study.

About 17,000 Herero and Nama, some half-white, were sent to concentration camps along the coast, like Shark Island. They were forced to build the Otavi railroad – men, women and children, underfed, some skin and bones, raped and whipped, worked till they dropped. Conditions were so terrible almost half never made it out of the camps alive.

Those who lived through the genocide were tattooed and forced to wear an identity badge around their necks. Their movements were controlled by the government. With land and livestock gone they had little choice but to work for Germans in the new racial hierarchy.

And yet still the Germans feared them.

A hundred years later Germany apologized but did not think they owed the Herero and Nama anything more than their fine words.

Source: “Forgotten Genocides” (2011), edited by Rene Lemarchand

~#~

Yes, the Herero and Nama Holocaust -- which included the plundering of their land -- give the absolute lie to the "single story"of Jewish ownership of the word.

I don't know about you, but as a child of the African Diaspora, it wasn't until a year or so ago, that I knew anything about these facts.  But, it's no real surprise that this particular story is hardly, if ever  disseminated is it?  After all, it is the victor who writes the history.

I thank Abagond for both, writing and permitting me to repost this heretofore, mostly buried, African history truth.   I have to admit though, it was Brother Asa's, The Forgotten Namibian Genocide, posted over at AfroSpear in late September, that rocked my soul and had me hearing Jimmy Baldwin whispering:

I have said that the Civilized have never been able to honor, recognize, or describe the Savage. Once they had decided that he was savage, there was nothing to honor, recognize or describe.

Yes, I read Abagond's post, and yes, I saw the pictures.  But this was way more than that. The stories told in the BBC documentary embedded there -- were Baldwin's words writ large.  The unvarnished truth told, based on facts documented by the Germans themselves, confirms that.  What it also shows, is  the mastery with which white supremacy colludes, to make and keep those not similarly situated -- invisible.  After watching it, I felt the need to leave an immediate comment.  Here's a part of what I said:

"I didn’t know anything about this until Abagond’s post; they taught me nothing about this in Catholic school, or my movin’ on up, predominantly Black, public school, nor my Alabama HBCU! That, is not only a damned shame — it’s the most effective trick ever played! That’s why we have no unity, Man. We don’t know shit about “those ties that bind” — nor anything at all about those, who bind the ties.  Chilling.{smdh}

Even worse, schools still, to this day, mandate the teaching and learning about “The Holocaust” the Jews experienced (as if it were the only “holocaust” ever) — at the hands of these same Germans — but nothing about this! Insulting, to say the very damned least. What about our children having to know and understand this shit along with its historical implications on them, today?"

After leaving that comment at Asa's, I was reminded of a long, back-and-forth where I'd been taken to task by white and Black alike -- for using the term, "African Holocaust" in a comment on this post last year.  The post was about that, "Woman is the Nigger of the World" Slutwalk sign, but it evolved  (or devolved, depending on how you see it) after I said, on 10/8/11 @4:05 pm, in response to someone else:

Thanks Laura. When I read that – You can’t expect millions of people to understand the complex history and impacts of the word when they are simply copying their favourite music artist….” BS, I had to step away from the computer for awhile, because it just wears me out sometimes how white folk will say just anything – even, and especially if it’s stupid – to hold onto that privilege. Millions of people understand the complex history of the Jewish Holocaust (6 million) and impacts of the slurs so associated, however the African Holocaust (20+ million) – not so much. {smdh}

The issue in the comments then became --"Who has the right to use the word, holocaust" with a comment from Layla on 10/10/11 @ 6:49 p.m.  It's quite long, so I'll just post the first paragraph and you can follow the link to read the rest of it, as well as, the rather lengthy, sometimes heated contretemps among the ladies:

I’m curious to know what the author to the OP has in mind when she writes of “off-limits terminology … reclaimed by Jewish communities”. The only one I can really think of is usage of the term ‘holocaust’ which refers to the specifically genocide committed by Nazis in WWII. And yet Deb (#comment-4964) has decided to appropriate that term for herself by referring to the “African Holocaust...The fact that nobody called out Deb in her appropriation of ‘Holocaust’, combined with these other musings, make me think that we care less about eliminating oppression and social justice for all and more about how we can discursively advantage ourselves and ‘our people’. It’s this tribalism that depresses me more and more.

My response to her was equally lengthy, but here's some of it starting on 1010/11 @ 10:35pm:

That the only “off-limits terminology” of which you can think, as relates to the Jewish community is ’holocaust’, seems disingenuous at best if we’re going to engage in real talk here (I’ll get to that in a minute).

But first of all, ‘holocaust’ as defined by Merriam-Webster (and crunktastic) includes: mass slaughter of people; especially: GENOCIDE. Though often capitalized to refer to the Jews, that is NOT it’s only definition (translation – it’s not all about the Jews. Therefore, as much as you’d like to believe I’m “appropriating” a term that is the sole purview of a specific group of people – I am not (but your statement is too funny on its face, given all the “appropriation” in which white folk – and those who subscribe to “Being White and Other Lies” have engaged, but I digress). As crunktastic said in her reply, “you should go read a history book, or two, or five.”...Your use of the word “inane” followed by “oppression” versus “genocide” – along with your willingness to vehemently defend Jewish “genocide” while merely lumping the African Holocaust (and yes crunktastic, I do view it as such) in with other “oppression” already tells me you are comfortable making some people invisible – *full stop*

Crazy stuff right?  Regardless, the way I view it hasn't changed -- it just got better-educated, thanks to German hubris.  And as I looked back at the exchanges through a "less warm" lens," I realized, I'd missed a most important comment, directly related to this post, made by eshowman on 10/11/11 @ 4:29 pm.  She said:

Layla, one of the ways that white privilege works is that whites do not have to utilize any intellectual rigor in their comments about race and expect to be seen as valid, Hundreds of African ethnic groups were decimated during colonization of Africa and German tactics used to wipe out the Herero and Namaqua in what is now Namibia were simply less sophisticated practice for what they would to 9 million people (not iust 6 million Jews), including all black Germans 50 years later. Are you saying that the Africans pain felt is less important that that of the Jews?

So caught up in Layla's foolishness, I'd overlooked the reference that would've led me to this history lesson a year before Abagond's post.  But it didn't register -- because I didn't know a damned thing about it!

For the second time now, the video on Asa's post has become "unavailable" (through no fault of his; first the YouTube video disappeared then, the Google video disappeared!).   Luckily (at least for now) I'd found it in parts on YouTube and saved it to this draft.  I'm going to post as many of the six as I can and just hope you get to see them before they too, are all pulled.  Please see it through to the end, I promise there's lots to  learn:

• "But what few people realize, is that places like Auschwitz were not Germany's first concentration camps, and the Holocaust was not Germany's first genocide."
• "But the ghosts of the Namibian genocide have been re-awoken.  They've returned to haunt modern, liberal, post-war Germany.  And in doing so,  they force Germany to wake up to a very, uncomfortable fact -- that the dark, racial theories that helped to inspire the Nazis, run much deeper into German and European history than most people want to acknowledge."
• "Today, the grandchildren of those who survived the Namibian genocide have begun to fight for compensation, and for Germany to acknowledge the first genocide of the 20th century -- the genocide of the Second Reich."  And us?  We just happy as hayell to have a Black face in the White House. {smdh}
• Isn't it funny how white supremacy treats German "slums," finding more space for them to spread out, as opposed to American "slums," which somehow, don't deserve the same effort?  America's MO is to blame us "Others" for our circumstances, choosing gentrification to solve our "ghetto" problems.  What damned good does that do us??  Let's not lie to ourselves anymore m'kay?  There's quite a bit of uninhabited land in America.  Hell, during my numerous roadtrips  -- up and down the East coast; across the country, back and forth to the Middle Coast (read, "Belly of the Beast"); or day-trippin' from Monterey, down to San Diego, or up to Big Sur,  I've seen plenty "purple mountains' majesties"; "amber waves of grain" and some "fruited plains!"
• "One reason for the slow pace of colonization was that the land was already the living space of the local African peoples...like colonists elsewhere, they would have to take that land from the Africans."  And to this day -- nothing about that has changed!  What I wanna know is, will we children of the African Diaspora, ever, collectively "stand our damned ground?"  It seems to me that, unlike the Herero and Nama, modern-day Blacks, living in Western societies especially, are so wrapped up in our assimilation -- we cannot even perceive of being "convinced that there was no other option but to resist." {smdh}

Namibia Genocide 2/6 cannot be embedded "by request" (whose "request," I wonder)  Here's the link -- you can still watch it on YouTube.  After you do, maybe you can explain to me why this part, in particular, has been censored (I do have some thoughts as to why, but I'll hold them for right now).



"This world is being redistributed.  With time, we will inevitably need more space.  And only by the sword, will we be able to get it.   This is a matter for our generation, and for our existence."

Man!  That shit sounds like, looks like, and feels just like our faux, "American empire" being led by the Changeling, who has, to-date:

• disrespected Pakistan's sovereignty so he could brag about murdering Osama (Can you imagine some foreign country, rollin' up on us like that without getting -- slaughtered??)
• disrespected Libya's sovereignty so he and Hilary could brag about murdering Qaddafi  ("We came, we saw, he died."  How crass is that?!)
• and as a result of undercover fomenting of rebellion, soon, he'll disrespect Syria's sovereignty because that's what his string-pullers demand
• declared Afghanistan his "necessary war"
• sent U.S. troops to Australia to guard the Uranium sitting on indigenous land;
• kowtowed to Israel on the spread of settlements on Palestinian land (as Dr. Clarke said, "Who told you God was in the real estate business?"); on Iranian sanctions that are choking the sovereign country's ability to do business, hobbling its economy; and certainly on the ever-present, "war " whistles
• continued to grind that financial, foot-on-neck in Haiti, in collusion with Daddy Shrub and Slick Willy, ousting democratically elected leaders in favor of those loyal to empire
• helped the rest of the western, white supremacists install a puppet to rule in Côte d'Ivoire "by the sword"
  
  
  
  
• "Numbered metal tags?"  It just befuddles me how, we readily ignore the pain and suffering of our own, for that of supposed "allies" who historically had their hands all over the slave trade.
• Death certificates with "death through exhaustion" pre-printed on them -- just like my SC birth certificate,  pre-printed with "Negro" on it. {smdh}
• "Forced slave labor" -- sounds just like America, right?  Tell me, who built that damned White House and all of those fine buildings up in Washington, DC?
• "Today this cemetery is the playground for the tourists who ride dune buggies over the remains of the Herero dead." Is that not similar to what has happened to more Black graves in America than we can count, all over these alleged, United States?  When I went to James Island (now Kunta Kinte Island) in The Gambia, there was definitely some Pan-African "warmness" happening when, given its significance, we saw some young, white Europeans playing around on the "Freedom Flagpole" (it's around the 0:45 click in the video).  My few trips there taught me that Europeans do find the country to be their "playground" when they're on holiday).
• And Shark Island?  The African "Auschwitz," if I do say so myself.

• Just like the "postcards" sent and saved here in America, the poster children of white supremacy also had an affinity for photographing those they'd exterminated.
• A municipal camping site?  Really??
• Apparently cattle-cars were the rage, long before Jews rode to their fate in them.  But, true to the collusion, it is only the Jewish suffering that has been memorialized (listen to the reasons for this project, and I'll bet you a nickel you'll see white Tennessee's, racist slip showing).
• "A new history of the colony was fabricated..." -- There's nothing new under the sun when dealing with white supremacy, Family.  My prayer is that we  will all, sooner, rather  than later -- get that shit through our heads!

This is where the Jews enter the picture -- after Germany had already perfected their tactics.  So  the "Oppression Olympics," with which I'd been accused in the afore-mentioned post last year is certainly moot.

"The descendants of the Herero who had survived the genocide began to revive their history.  But what they discovered was that the story of the genocide had been completely wiped from official memory.  Three generations of white Namibians had been born into a nation where only their history was officially accepted."

Family, we re-e-e-ally have to start recognizing that this is how people's histories get erased.  If you can't, you should -- because it's all the same shit different day.  For Germany to have built "a huge statue to celebrate their victory over the Herero, actually on the site of their biggest concentration camp," is absolutely unconscionable -- but again, hardly surprising given with whom we're dealing.  And "the land!"  What the hell can be said about that?  Unless you're deaf, dumb and blind, there's no way you can't see what's happening with "the land" -- all over the world -- and not be able to put two and two together.

Per the narrator, the Von Trotha family's apology notwithstanding, "This apology will not appease the Herero, solve the land issue or end the reparations case."  And it should not.  Hell, people can't eat apologies, nor can they build homes or pass down wealth to their children on them as the colonizers have.  Now don't get it twisted, apologies are good,  if, and only if, they're sincere, and backed up by some real, tangible action.  Like my Grandmama used to say, "It ain't what dey say, Debi -- it's what dey do!"

In Part 1 of the six videos, the narrator says, "This is the story of the genocide that modern Germany has not come to terms with."  No shit!  To this day, not only is Germany still ignoring the living survivors and descendants of this African Holocaust, perpetrated for the purposes of "greed is good," land-grabbing barbarity; experimentation to prove their Aryan-ness was superior to our African-ness; "practice" for what was to come for the Jews, almost 40 years later  (as eshowoman noted in her comment above), and of course -- facilitating the collusion of the White Supremacist Capitalist Patriarchy (WSCP).

How is that you ask?  My Sister, bell hooks, defines the WSCP here.  And as I understand her, it evokes a political world that we all frame ourselves in relationship to.  Moreover, its ideology allows anyone -- willing to collude with the forces of racism and imperialism in order to preserve the institutional construct of interlocking systems of domination that define our reality -- to be a part (so it ain't just white folk).

Keeping that definition in mind in relation to the Jews, Germany gets to look like the appropriately, and generously repentant, former savagely murdering, oppressive regime to the rest of the White Supremacist Capitalist Patriarchy who, complicit, and turning a blind eye when Hitler and the Nazis were exterminating Jews -- get to share in that lookin' good (a regular, "alabaster bretheren alliance" until most recently, with the Changeling, dutifully taking on America's guilt, with his, "I have Israel's back" pronouncement; the "Son of Africa hasn't said jack about having any Africans' backs however -- unless of course, it jibes with what the string-pullers want him to say);  AND, Jewish victims of the Nazis, get to not only own the word "holocaust" -- but to benefit handsomely from the owning, here, there and everywhere -- all while the experiences of Africans are relegated to a position akin to Ralph Ellison's, "Invisible Man."

There is much with which I agree in this piece -- The Legal Claim for German Reparations to the Herero Nation.  However, this small portion is illustrative of the collusion of the WSCP, marginalizing folk as they usually do:

"It would be both a futile and dishonorable discourse to venture into any kind of a comparative analysis of genocide - and such a discussion is irrelevant for purposes of the Herero position. Genocide is genocide: murdering an African tribe cannot be rotely (sic - I think remotely is what was meant) compared to murdering a European people, or a European nation. Nothing that the Herero say in any way dismisses or diminishes the unique crimes that Germany committed against Jews. Modern international law of reparations is dominated by extensive Jewish claims for reparations against Germany and other countries, but this is not the limit of reparations claims. Even in the context of World War Two, reparations have been paid to others, including $1.2 billion to Americans of Japanese descent for their imprisonment and loss of their lands. Also reparations have been made in a parallel settlement to Japanese Canadians, and a case is pending against the Japanese for reparations for Korean "comfort women," forced into prostitution by the Japanese army. Other European claims, including that of the Romani people, raised by other peoples subjected to mass extermination in concentration camps, have failed. None of these claims for reparations compare to the Jewish holocaust, but their success, nevertheless, represents important advances in human rights law." (emphasis mine)

Yeah, I couldn't wrap my brain around the emphasized portions.  Particularly given what followed them.  Still, it's an analysis worth a read, if for nothing else, than this simple observation:

The Herero did not "invent" their demand for reparations. Rather, it is derived entirely from their careful reading of modern German history. Germany is making reparations to both individual Jews and the State of Israel for acts of genocide inthe 1930s and 1940s, scarcely thirty years after the Herero War. The Herero ask an obvious question: what is the legal - or moral - distinction between German genocide directed at Jews and German genocide directed at Africans? Surely, in the modern world, a racial distinction cannot account for this difference in policy. Or is the distinction based on some meaningful difference between genocide in the Herero War and World War Two? As it was simply put by Mburumba Kerina, a Herero activist, "(T)he concerns of the Hereros must be seen in the same light as that of the Jewish people." (emphasis mine)

Now don't you think, with all these "lettered, Black, American academics" all over every manner of media and "higher education" (I use those last two words very loosely, given who's had, and continues to have, their hands on the "higher education" rudder.  Guess you can tell, I'm not much for impressing folk with symbolism) -- they would've been able to use all those alphabets to come up with an effective and feasible demand for reparations for Black folk here in America (instead of just lining their pockets). But they haven't. Yet, many of us, look down our noses at our family across the water as "savages," just like the WSCP does. (smdh)  But unlike us, they went to work  -- researching all the variables and coming up with a legal plan that's sound, which still may not survive the machinations of the WSCP -- but they stood up, and continue to do so.

~#~

Okay finally, I want to wrap this up with the beautiful, critically thinking, young sister, Chimamanda Adichie, and her warning about, "The danger of a single story" -- because it applies.  She says:

"...So that is how to create a single story; show a people as one thing, as only one thing, over and over again, and that is what they become.

It is impossible to talk about the single story without talking about power.  There is a word, an Igbo word, that I think about whenever I think of the power structures of the world and it is "nkali," it's a noun that loosely translates to -- "to be greater than another." Like our economic and political worlds, stories, too are defined, by the principal of "nkali." how they are told, who tells them, when they are told, how many stories are told -- are really dependent on power.

Power is the ability not just to tell the story of another person but to make it the definitive story of that person. The Palestinian poet, Mourid Barghouti writes that if you want to dispossess a people, the simplest way to tell that story, is to tell the story and to start with, secondly.  Start the story with the arrows of the Native Americans and not with the arrival of the British and you have an entirely different story.  Start with the story of the failure of the African states, and not with the colonial creation of the African states, and you have an entirely different story."

I started this post on the heels of Yom Kippur (which ended Wednesday, September 26 ) and I'm wondering -- for which behaviors, did Jews "atone" and "repent?"  Was it for their ongoing inhumane treatment of the Palestinians whose land they took and continue to occupy like the Germans?  Or was it for their racist treatment  of Africans whom they daily abuse, both physically and psychologically and at times, try to exterminate?  Or maybe, for the truth they've contorted and used, in collusion with the WSCP that allows them to continue to own the word "holocaust" as only theirs, in return for all manner of special dispensations and varied reparations from Germany and the rest of the White Supremacist Capitalist Patriarchy worldwide?

Back to Chimamanda:

"Stories matter. Many stories matter.  Stories have been used to dispossess and to malign, but stories can also be used to empower and to humanize.  Stories can break, the dignity of a people, but stories can also repair that broken dignity... The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story…The consequence of the single story is this: It robs people of dignity. It makes our recognition of our equal humanity difficult. It emphasizes how we are different rather than how we are similar."

I agree -- but first, "many, many, more of our stories" must be told -- by us (I heard Nina Simone whispering as I wrote that). Until then...




Related:
Putin vows ‘Russia will never forget Holocaust’
Wholesale Murder of Africans
Namibia: The return of the Herero and Nama skulls- Coming to Terms With a Difficult History
Namibians welcome home skulls taken to Germany
The Paper Clip Project