From: Self-Help News [mailto:selfhelpnews@ubol.com]
Sent: Wednesday, December 26, 2012 11:13 AM Subject: RE: Obama Invades Africa
The real question is, when will China send troops to Afrika to protect its interests, in support of its Afrikan trading partners, now that the USA has set precedence.
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Why should China not follow America’s example? And how likely is that now and in the future?
It is arguable that China has a larger commercial interest in Afrika than the USA.
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Sometime during 2002, Dr Vince Hines, an Afrikan writer, based in the UK, in a radio interview, predicted that ‘the next global conflict will commence on Afrika’s sacred soil. He argued that was a logical progression as current industrial nations recognized that, whoever controlled Afrika’s vast natural resources, would be the real global powerhouse in the future.
The USA is now bankrupt, as a matter of public records. Americans coined the phrase, ‘fiscal cliff’, a metaphor for America’s current economic cul-de-sac.
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History teaches that empires come and go, even the ones in denial. If anyone doubts this, ask the British nation. The only potential complication with this natural order is when the player refuses to leave the ‘stage’ - as the English playwright, William Shakespeare, described it, demanding extra performing time, not recognizing that time is up.
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A bankrupt state with powerful military assets, in addition to having over one thousand military active bases across the world, is unlikely to leave quietly. “What have we got to lose” doctrine is likely to kick in, among military planners. This question is likely to be sufficient temptation for the Leadership to yield and grab what is possible from perceived ‘weaker nations’; and, given available firing power, if necessary, fight other nations to keep the booty.
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Afrikans at home and abroad must avoid being trampled like grass under feet, while elephants fight. Among nations, there is no permanent friendship; only permanent interest.
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Dr Hines said that Diasporan and Continental Afrikans and their supporters must do what was necessary to be involved in progressive operations on the Continent of Africa, in order to influence positive outcomes for Afrikans at home and abroad.
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It could be that the USA feels that some Afrikans need protection from themselves, who are unable to navigate their future, even in light of the fact that Afrika and Afrikans had been looking after their affairs satisfactorily, before and during modern homo-sapiens stages for over one hundred and sixty thousands years, even before Caucasians and anyone else saw the light of day.
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The problem began when Afrikans were injected with foreign doctrines of all sorts – religious, economic, political, linguistic and cultural. In the process of accommodating foreign values and associated contradictions, Afrikans lost sight of Primary Afrikan Data, even their deities, in many instances. We must refocus to regain balance, even in light of current local and regional tribal challenges.
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Global Afrika and Afrikans should always keep this in our conscious minds. Demands and commitments to manage our Afrikan affairs are not calls for anti-American sentiments. This should also be kept in mind.
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Ba Afrika wrote a poem on 15.01.2007, “DANCE OF THE HOUSE SNAIL”, which warned of the danger of significant division in Afrika between two powerful forces. The poem is reproduced below.
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Editorial Collective
Self-Help News – “Giving Voice to the Voiceless”
Dance of the House Snail
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Oh silent Snail
What brought you here?
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Slowly shuffling
Stopping and
Wiggling your
Antennas.
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Black Snail
Where is your
Protective shell?
You could have been
Crushed
In the Dark
Moving silently
Leaving behind
Clear patterns from
Your silver excretions.
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Is that a message
You scrolled on
The dusty floor ?
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Are we mortals to
Understand the degrees of
Your movements
Your turns and twists
Your forwards and backwards
Your circles
Your stops ?
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Silent Black Snail
Is that an outline of
ALKEBU-LAN?
Is that QAMT?
Is that KEMET?
Is that ETHEOPIA?
Is that MIGRAIN?
Is that ORTEGIA?
Is that GREATER EGYPT?
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Silent One
Why have you
Shown an International Boundary Line
Dividing ALKEBU-LAN in two parts ?
Why have you shown a two
Nation Continent?
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The lesser geographical mass
In the North and
The Greater
In the Unified East, Central and South.
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The West,
Merged with the
North’s Mass,
No longer functioning
Independently?
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What are those Great structures,
Along the ALKEBU-LAN shores of
The Atlantic Oceans?
Two lay bare along the New North and
Two lay bare along the New South.
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Are these friendly structures?
Are these the signs of
Great wealth and prosperity
For the ALKEBU-LAN peoples?
Are they indications of
Two Super Powers emerging from
The ALKEBU-LAN Soil?
Do they indicate Great and lasting Unity?
Do they indicate
Great and lasting Divisions?
Are they friendly structures?
Are they hostile structures?
Would the Ancestors approve?
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Is this our Destiny?
Is this the Future?
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Silent Snail
Have you a message
For us?
Moving silently and slowly
Disappearing into
The unknown.
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Ba ~Afrika
15.01.2007
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"You cannot plow a field by turning it over in your mind" Unknown
Paule-Sylvie Yonke
Balafon Communications
Re-branding the image of Africa
212-510-8512
Click here: www.petersmap.com
|
Thursday, December 27, 2012
America/China Invades Africa
Ngugi Wa Thiongo and Chinue Achebe on the Psycholinguistic Crisis of the African
Ngugi argues that colonization was not simply a process of physical force. Rather, "the bullet was the means of physical subjugation. Language was the means of the spiritual subjugation. |
Ngugi Wa Thiongo and Chinue Achebe on the Politics of Language and Literature in Africa
Most African literature is oral. It includes stories, riddles, proverbsand sayings. In Decolonizing the Mind, Ngugi Wa Thiong'o discusses the importance of oral literature to his childhood. He says "I can vividly recall those evenings of storytelling around the fire side. It was mostly the grown ups telling the children but everybody was interested and involved. We children would retell the stories the following day to other children who worked in the fields."The stories main characters were usually animals. Ngugi said "Hare being small, weak, but full of innovative wit, was our hero. We identified with him as he struggled against the brutes of prey like lyon, leopard and hyena. His victories were our victories and we learnt that the apparently weak can outwit the strong. Accordiong to Ngugi's way of seeing, you can't study African literatures without studying the particular cultures and oral traditions from which Africans draw their plots, styles and metaphors.
So where does all of this leave us in a discussion of current African literature? It leads to an ongoing debate—what is African literature? Ngugi sees a structural problem however. He says that in a given discussion over this subject we may seesome of the following questions: "Are we talking of literature about Africa or the African experience? Was it literature written by Africans? What about a non-African who wrote about Africa? What if an African set his work in Greenland—does this qualify?" These are good questions, but, Ngugi explains, they were raised at the conference of African Writers of English Expression which included only English writing African authors because those that wrote in African languages were not invited.
This blindness to the indigenous voice of Africans is a direct result, according to Ngugi, of colonization. Ngugi explains that during colonization, missionaries and colonial administrators controlled publishing houses and the educational context of novels. This means that only texts with religious stories or carefully selected stories which would not tempt young Africans to question their own condition were propogated. Africans were controlled by forcing them to speak European languages—they attempted to teach children (future generations) that speaking English is good and that native languages are bad by using negative reinforcement. This is a process recognized by the great Martiniquen writer, Franz Fanon. Language was twisted into a mechanism that separated children from their own history because their own heritage were shared only at home, relying on orature in their native language. At school, they are told that the only way to advance is to memorize the textbook history in the colonizer's language. By removing their native language from their education they are separated from their history which is replaced by European history in European languages. This puts the lives of Africans more firmly in the control of the colonists.
Ngugi argues that colonization was not simply a process of physical force. Rather, "the bullet was the means of physical subjugation. Language was the means of the spiritual subjugation." In Kenya, colonization propogated English as the language of education and as a result, orature in Kenyan indigenous languages whithered away. This was devastating to African literature because, as Ngugi writes, "language carries culture and culture carries (particularly through orature and literature) the entire body of values by which we perceive ourselves and our place in the world." Therefore, how can the African experience be expressed properly in another language?
The issue of which language should be used to compose a truly African contemporary literature is thus one replete with contradictions. Ngugi argues that writing in African languages is a necessary step toward cultural identity and independence from centuries of European exploitation. However, let us consider critic Susan Gallagher's account below wherein Nigerian author Chinue Achebe discusses why he chose not to write or translateThings Fall Apart into "Union Igbo." What does Achebe use the "weapon" of the English language to accomplish in Things Fall Apart?
"In response to the now infamous declaration of Kenyan writer Ngugi wa Thiong'o that African writers should write in African languages, Achebe commented [in a talk at West Chester Univ.]: 'The British did not push language into my face while I was growing up.' He chose to learn English and eventually to write in English as a means of 'infiltrating the ranks of the enemy and destroying him from within.'....'It doesn't matter what language you write in, as long as what you write is good,' Achebe stated....Yet Achebe fully recognizes that English is symbolically and politically connected with the despoiler of traditional culture with intolerance and bigotry. 'Language is a weapon, and we use it,' he argued. 'There's no point in fighting a language'" (qtd. in Gallagher ).
Achebe rejects the Western notion of art for its own sake in essays he has published (e.g. in the collections Morning Yet on Creation Day and Hopes and Impediments). Instead he embraces the conception of art at the heart of African oral traditions and values: "art is, and always was, at the service of man," he writes. "Our ancestors created their myths and told their stories with a human purpose;" hence, "any good story, any good novel, should have a message, should have a purpose."
Achebe, Chinua. Hopes and Impediments: Selected Essays. 1988. New York : Anchor-Doubleday, 1990.Achebe, Chinua. Morning Yet on Creation Day: Essays. London: Heinemann, 1975. Achebe, Chinua. Things Fall Apart. [First published 1958.] Expanded edition with notes. 1996. London: Heinemann, 2000. Gallagher, Susan VanZanten. "Linguistic Power: Encounter with Chinua Achebe." The Christian Century 12 March 1997, 260. Ngugi wa Thiongo, Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature, 1986. |
Wednesday, December 26, 2012
Marvin X Returns to the Source: Fresno, California
My daughter Amira urged me to spend Xmas in Fresno with my 85 year old father in law, Mr. James Hall, who lives alone on five arcres in Fresno, not far from the 2 1/2 acres of land once owned by my mother before she joined the ancestors. I hesitated before agreeing to ride down to the Central Valley with my attorney daughter and her children, Jah Amiel, 5, and Naeemah Joy, 1, but I finally packed my bags and joined Amira for the ride to Fresno, 2 1/2 hours from the Bay Area.Why the hesitation to visit the land of my birth, childhood and teenage years?
I want Marvin X off campus by any means necessary!--Gov. Ronald Reagan, 1969
What about the land where I was almost crucified by the State of California under the Gov. Ronald Reagan regime, 1969, while trying to lecture at Fresno State College, now University? What about the land where my beautiful son walked into a train to take his life?
Well, shall I dwell on the negative or the positive, after all, I still have three children born in this land, Marvin K, Nefertiti and Amira. Only Muhammida was born in Berkeley and grew up in Philadelphia. The others are Valley children and so I should be thankful, thankful for the mothers who raised them, mostly without my help since I was so busy fighting for that abstraction called freedom. But was it not real when black police officer Jack Kelly said, "Marvin, when you were fighting to teach at Fresno State University, you made it better for everybody. Before you came to FSU, black police officers could not patrol the white side of town!"
Ancestor poet/professor/critic, novelist Sherley Ann Williams
Should I not be thankful for growing up with my beautiful soul sister and fellow comrade in the arts, ancestor Sherley A. Williams? And those other Valley girls, Patricia, Sharon and Cynthia, who made a profound difference in my life!
And yet I can never forget how this town murdered my comrade, Winfrey Streets, Black Panther leader and choir director of Your Black Educational Theatre, 1971; how they made a handyman shoot him in the back with a shotgun then blamed me for my friend's murder that smelled of Cointelpro, the FBI's counter intelligence program that targeted any leader or potential leader in any town, large or small. And then the Negro newspaper did a character assassination in a full page article saying I was the self-appointed savior and was responsible for all the town's social ills. Such is the hesitation as we neared this town halfway between Los Angeles and the San Francisco/Oakland Bay Area, that used to host the West Coast Relays, a ritual for socializing between the bloods from south, central and northern California.
As a member of the Edison high basketball team, I played against Tommy Smith before he raised his
black power fist with John Carlos in Mexico City. I was astounded Tommy had found black consciousness since he was the only black member of the Lemoore High basketball team that we beat.
We finally arrived in Fresno and my daughter dropped me off at her grandfather's house. I must admit I was blessed with the coolest mother and father in laws any man could want. They were so gracious and understanding with me, even while I was abusive to their daughters. Well, my father in law once told me, "If my granddaughters didn't love you so much, I would have killed you long ago for physically abusing my daughter." Of course, I didn't fully appreciate his words until I had three daughters, then I felt the same as my father in law, yes, the very one whose house I was entering. Time is a mother!
Elder James Hall has been long known as a story teller. His granddaughters are often amazed they are caught between their storyteller father and grandfather, two self-admitted crazy nigguhs! It was a blessing to be out in the country area of Fresno where Mr. Hall raises greens, goats and a horse, even though most of Fresno is now a big city with traffic jams, and the Blacks live all over town, no longer proscribed to the West Side where I grew up from the projects to the 2 1/2 acres my mother bought after becoming a successful real estate broker.
During the late 40s and early 50s my parents were in real estate and also published a black newspaper the Fresno Voice, where my writing career began sitting atop my father's desk pecking on his typewriter while he set type spelling words backwards. But my father had a gambling habit (with other people's money) so he had to give up real estate and move to Oakland where he became a florist on 7th Street (see my first play Flowers for the Trashman, San Francisco State Drama Department, 1965).
If I were not a good listener as well as a storyteller, I would not have been able to stand Mr. Hall for five minutes, but imagine the stories an 85 year old black man has about his sojourn in America? And so I listened to his stories until it was time for us to go have dinner at his son's house, president of a local bank. After dinner, Mr. Hall dropped me off and made a run. The next morning I got up early and walked the five acres, eating oranges off the tree, talking to the black dog, the horse and goats, checking out the field of greens.
--Marvin X
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