VIP: Vagabonds in Power
“So let us summon a new spirit of patriotism; of service and responsibility where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder and look after not only ourselves, but each other. Let us remember that if this financial crisis taught us anything, it's that we cannot have a thriving Wall Street while Main Street suffers - in this country, we rise or fall as one nation; as one people. Let us resist the temptation to fall back on the same partisanship and pettiness and immaturity that has poisoned our politics for so long.” Barack Obama
If you are not hopping mad, you ought to be. News that some smart Alecks have, once again, taken Oma Ghana for a sweet ride is making the global news, making our dear land the laughing stock of the entire civilized world.
This is what happened: With all pomp and aplomb, our over-compensated government officials came out to tell us that by some dint of hard work, shrewd negotiation and sheer brilliance they have succeeded in offloading 70% of Ghana’s share in the VALCO Company and, in the process, made a hefty profit for the treasury. The Cynics among us immediately went to town dismissing the deal, while most of us adopt a ‘wait and see’ outlook.
Our well-paid officials stepped out of their 4-wheels to beat their chests and came out with all the trumpets blaring. They were all over the place huffing and puffing. The VALCO deal was the best ever for the nation, and it was executed with luminous brilliance whose dazzling light we shall all come to admire in no time at all. Alas, it was all a lie and a stupid one for that matter!
The empty boasts of the SOBs (kindly excuse my gutter language here) was to be rudely punctured few days later when news from Press Agencies started filtering in that it was all a sweet scam. Call it 419, if you like and you will be right on mark. 419 is the section of the Nigerian Criminal Code that deals with fraud and fraudulent offences. It is now identified with cyber and other Ponzi scams.
A report on CiTi FM confirmed the fear many of us harboured: Ghana has, once again, been made to look trashy and very ridiculous. No, this was not the first time some unconscionable con artists have taken us for a collective fool and our nation for a sweet ride. Do you remember the multi-billion IFC loan fiasco when our cheapo-cheapo politicians, with their begging mentality, dragged the nation into contracting a loan from a non-existing company? As then, our parliamentarians totally abdicated their constitutional responsibilities of oversight. If I understood it correctly eighteen (18) members of our 230-members Parliament approved the VALCO scam (what else to call it?)
That some of these parliamentarians still parade our streets as ‘honourables’ reveals the depth to which the morals of our society have sunk. That some of them could even attempt to rationalize away their utter stupidity shows the contempt they have for the rest of us. But there they were on the ether, doing mental gymnastics, in order, to justifiable the unpardonable.
I certainly hope that I am not the only one affronted by this gigantic slap in our faces. What exactly is wrong with us in Africa when people go into public service not to render any service but to gain access to our national patrimony? The pictures of Africans continue to adorn NGOs pamphlets on hunger, diseases and starvation, yet those that charge themselves with mis-ruling us continue to loot the paltry sums in our treasury! I refused to buy the argument that our corruption has to do with our level of poverty. Perhaps it is the other way around: our level of poverty is engendered by (in part) by the endemic, systemic and institutionalized corruption that has become a culture in our land. Corruption is seen in our society as just a way of life! Yet, like Ostriches we bury our heads in sand and hear no evil, and see no evil.
For crying out loud, we pay these people very good money and we do not ask them for the impossible. We honestly do not even ask for much in return from our so-called honourables. Anyone who has visited the Parliament and see our ‘honourables’ at work will know that they are not among the most hard-working Ghanaians. Our MPs cannot win a trophy for slaving for this country. Attired in their best Saville-Row suits, they speak GRAMMAR for two to three hours a day, the rest of the day they could abuse in chasing their part-time girl-friends around Accra and environs. And for that, they receive not only very decent salaries, but also good emoluments. And they take a car loan from the state, a 4-wheel drive jeep to boot.
And yet they cannot even perform the most rudimentary of checks on a wayward Executive! It is inexcusable that in this age and time, our Parliamentarians find it difficult to look things up, do a little research which, thanks to Google, is within anyone’s reach. And by their folly they exposed our dear land to global opprobrium! And yet, they’re expecting us to be gyrating with gratitude. Give me a decent break, please!
It would have taken any serious member of our parliament less than a quarter of an hour on the internet to check on the status of the Norwegian and Brazilian companies to which one of nation’s most strategic assets is being sold. Alas, the lazybones we have for parliamentarians were too busy enjoying the good things of life to bother with such chores. And this shameless bunch of otiose elite will have no compunction whatever to collect their salaries at the end of the month. They will feel absolutely no shame to show their faces in the House. And they will think nothing of going on air or appearing on our television to come and insult us with their stupid defenses!
This brings us to what you and I are doing about the sad state of affairs in our land! The limit of tyrants, Frederick Douglass warned, are prescribed by those whom they oppress. And Professor Wole Soyinka opined that: “The man died in the man who keeps silent in the face of tyranny.”
And for those who do not know it, our constitution makes it our duty to safeguard our nation’s integrity when it states that It is the duty of every citizen to: “promote the prestige and good name of Ghana and respect the symbols of the nation.” Directive Principles of state Policy, Articles 34-41, Constitution of the Republic of Ghana, 1992.)
The destiny of this nation is the responsibility of each and every one of us. Sadly, most of us do not even care enough to be apathetic! Most of us believe that it is the responsibility of someone else to chronicle the ills we all see around us. Most of us are so lethargic that our rulers feel that they could do anything and get away with it. They have more fear of their desert gods in the sky than they have for those that elected them.
In years gone by we could count on out students to vibrate with positive anger at governmental shenanigans. Today our students are too bust jiving that they no longer possess a social conscience. And sadly it is onto their shoulders the nation’s affairs will be entrusted in few years to come. Our trade Unionists are certainly no longer up to par. There used to be a time when the representatives of our nation’s workers take their role as societal watchdog very seriously. Not even under the military have our trade unionists appear more comatose.
The Press has also abdicated their responsibilities. We have to ask what our media practitioners were doing when our nation was made to feel so ridiculous. The Ghana Journalist Association (GJA) owe us an explanation why none of the fine men and women plying their trade as journalists in this blessed country fail to notice that our nation is appending her sovereign signature to a fraudulent contract. It took releases from the World Press Agencies before our Journalists woke up from their slumber.
To those who clamor for the repel of the Law of causing financial loss the state, I say wait a sec. My heart bleeds for Uncle Tsatsu , but I do not think that he should be the last to suffer (unduly in his case).This VALCO deal must be forensically scrutinized and those who put our nation to such global shame should be made to face the severest sanction of the law. And for President Kufuor who proclaimed a regime with zero tolerance for corruption, I say he must use the last days of his administration to help get to the bottom of this rotten deal. It is one deal too rotten to be allowed to fizzle out.
May I suggest that we borrow a leaf from our Anago cousins? On assuming power, former President Olusegun Obasanjo was so alarmed by the level of corruption in Nigeria that he set up the Economic and Financial Crime Commission (EFCC). Corruption has not been banished from Nigeria but the EFCC has ensured state officials do not have the same impunity they used to enjoy in the past. I think that in Addition to CHIRAJ, we can sue a body like the EFCC in Ghana where today men and women, with no visible source of income, are tooling around town in designer cars with personalized number plates.
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Obama: Will racism stop him?
Barack Obama: Would Racism Stop him?
In exactly a week, Americans will go to the polls to elect their 44th President who, without argument, holds the most powerful position on earth.
The USA, effectively, operates a two-party democracy: The Republican Party and the Democratic Party. The country gives a good example of Karl Marx vivid observation that the government is the Executive Board of the ruling elite. The two parties diverge only in presentation and not on substance. There is absolutely no ideological difference as both parties still believe in the American Empire. And both parties still present to the American people the good image of a democracy at work thereby masking the role of the moneyed elite who are the true rulers of America. The rhetorical clashes between the Republicans and the Democrats centers only on how to maintain American hegemonic role in the world.
However, this year’s election offers an intriguingly potent new dimension: the emergence of a black candidate as a serious contender for the Presidency of the United States of America! For those not well educated in the role Race has played and continue to play in ‘God Own country,’ the emergence of Kenyan-fathered Barack Obama is truly revolutionary. Little wonder than many elderly blacks still think that they are in some dream world. They experienced slavery; all the injustices of segregations, Jim crows and all and the very idea that one of their own today aspire to the highest office in the land still seems to them like a fairy tale.
Consider this: When in 1961 Barack Obama cried his way into this world, many states of the American Union were still very rigidly (and legally) segregated – meaning that white do not mixed with blacks. There were separate facilities for both black and white. Like the apartheid that so thoroughly blighted South Africa, white people in the USA were legally protected for discriminating against black people. Black in many Southern states were barred from entering or eating at restaurants; using public libraries, swimming pools and other facilities. Many black performers could play at big hotels but have to eat at the hotel kitchen since they were not allowed to enter the restaurants. And of course, after their performances they have to hustle back to their black ghettoes since they were disbarred from sleeping in the hotels.
The classic case of the greatest athlete of all time, Mohammed Ali, is very illustrating. After winning the Olympic boxing gold medal, the ‘Lip of Louisiana’ went back expecting a hero welcome in his home state. Ali was, however, to be sorely disappointed as a white waiter cheekily told him that: “We don’t serve Niggers.” Never one to be verbally outpunched, Mohammed Ali retorted: “I don’t eat them either.” In disgust, Ali threw his medal into a river. (I highly recommend Richard Wright’s ‘Black Boy,’ to those who want to know more about the traumatic experiences of black people growing up in segregated America).
Race was and is still a very potent force in America, especially in its politics. Although American corporate media only show you black people in relation to crime, the fact is that American blacks have made their mark in every field of human endeavour where they have been allowed to participate fairly and freely. Almost all the cultures America transmits to the world have been created by black artistes. Can you think of an American music gender apart from Country Music that was not created by Black people?
Which makes racism all the more so stupid and so utterly incomprehensible! The White racists* believe that they are inherently superior to other people. They spend so much money, time and energy accumulating and proclaiming ‘evidences’ of their supposed superiority, yet they are unwilling to put it to a test in a free and fair contest. This is the big paradox of racism: unwillingness of its adherents to test its creed. The question is: if white people genuinely believe in their innate superiority, why do they require so much governmental protection? Why do they spend so much money, time and energy proclaiming it? As Professor Wole Soyinka distinctively puts it: “A Tiger does not need to proclaim its Tigritude.” If I believe that I am so hot, the simple and easy way to prove it is to engage in a free and fair contest. Not so with the racists: With an acute inferiority complex, they need to convince themselves that they are the superior beings.
The white racists believe that black people are of inferior nature (as Thomas Jefferson opined), yet they passed legislation barring the supposedly inferior people from receiving any education and from competing for decent jobs. During slavery Black people were barred from reading anything but the Bible. The white racists in both the USA and South Africa spent huge amount of money to give good education to white children while consigning black children to over-crowded and poorly-funded institutes, and they then turn around to wonder why black children are performing very poorly academically. As Herbert Aptheker wondered: “You cut a man’s tongue and you ask why he is dumb.” Many Southern states simply disallowed black students from receiving education higher than High School. In 1963, it required the intervention of Federal troops before the University of Mississippi would allow a black student.
And shall we mention lynching, albeit briefly? The word was derived from a Virginian Justice of Peace who believed in extrajudicial punishment, Charles Lynch. In many states in the south white mobs simply organized vigilante groups to hunt down and kill black people for any number of reasons or offenses without any process of law. Looking at a white woman (even a white prostitute) is a death sentence for a black male. The vigilantes kill their victims with the knowledge that they will get away with it always; the police simply look the other way. The Ku Klux Klan extensively used lynching to intimidate freed blacks who were voting and assuming political power in many parts of the South. The favorite method of killing was hanging. Tying their victims to the back of a truck and driving him on rough roads is another favorite method to dispatch black male. And please do not think that lynching was a thing of the past: a young black man was recently killed by a gang of white youth who tied to the back of their truck and dragged him until he died.
What is baffling is that the white racists do not deny their unprovoked and undeserved violence against black people, but they ask why black people should continue to pine about it? As any human being who experienced violence suffers a trauma, we have to ask if the racists think that we are outside of human psychology.
This was the environment from which Barack Obama grew and it was from this experience that he grew to triumph over all obstacles and prejudices in order to arrive at a summit in which no black person has ever climbed. This is a no mean achievement. Many blacks were not able to rise above their traumas; they succumb to exist as good-for-nothing drunk - living proof of the racists’ arguments that the victims of their crimes are inferior. Barack Obama did not succumb, thank goodness. He refused to let the appalling conditions of his environment get him down. He went to one of America’s best universities where he was so well regarded that he became the editor of his school law review. Today, just as we offer Nelson Mandela to the world as a MORAL GIANT, we offer Barack Obama as a POLITICAL GIANT. In a world populated by political and intellectual Lilliputians, Obama stands as an eloquent testimony that the human being offers infinite possibilities.
In Europe I tried to tell the racists that Black people do not ask for the moon: we do not even ask for anything extra at all. All we want is a level playing field where each and every human person would compete to the best of his or her knowledge and abilities. We do not believe that we are superior but we do not accept that we are inferior. Why this is difficult for the supposedly superior people to accept is difficult to understand.
Any dispassionate observer who watched the debates between Barack Obama and John Mccain cannot but see that the difference is crystal clear – he was simply too vastly superior to his rival. Urbane, sophisticated, educated, articulate and with a film star good looks, Obama represents the best face any nation can present to the world. He very confidently trounced his rival without humiliating him. He was so good that only the colour on his skin can stop him from becoming the 44th President of the US of A!
In every department Obama is the better candidate: He is young and fit; his rival is a ponderous old man. He is untainted by a scandal; McCain was sanctioned for accepting a bribe. His morality remains unquestioned; his rival has the integrity of a hyena. Obama boasts a solid filial fidelity; let’s not talk about McCain’s filial monkeyshines. His rival’s party records in office stinks – unending wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and now Syria. His rival’s party bad mismanagement of the economy has resulted in a crashed stock market and a collapsed mortgage sector.
Were he white Obama’s electoral victory would have be a foregone conclusion, but this is the United States of America where the colour black is still considered a stigma. Many who could not fathom a black President keep touting McCain supposed experience – they always fail to mention that McCain’s running (heartbeat away from the presidency) is a dumb blonde. Governor Palin’s dumbness makes my child looks like an Astrophysicist. Talking about experience, Mevrouw Palin believe that her state’s sharing a border with Russia is enough foreign policy experience!
As Time Magazine recently wrote of him: “Barack Obama has prospered in this presidential campaign because of the steadiness of his temperament and the judicious quality of his decision-making. They are his best-known qualities. The most important decision he has made — the selection of a running mate — was done carefully, with an exhaustive attention to detail and contemplation of all the possible angles. Two months later, as John McCain's peremptory selection of Governor Sarah Palin has come to seem a liability, it could be argued that Obama's quiet selection of Joe Biden defined the public's choice in the general-election campaign.”
Brother Barack Obama, I salute the audacity of your courage. Whatever happens in this year’s election, your place in history is assured.
*Racism is all about power and domination. There are many Africans and Asians who are racially prejudiced, but no Asian or African has the power to racially oppress another group at the global level. Nowhere on earth do Asians and Africans go around killing people because they are WHITE. For a better treatment of this important subject, I recommend ‘Black Power,’ by Stokely Carmichael, aka Kwame Ture.
In exactly a week, Americans will go to the polls to elect their 44th President who, without argument, holds the most powerful position on earth.
The USA, effectively, operates a two-party democracy: The Republican Party and the Democratic Party. The country gives a good example of Karl Marx vivid observation that the government is the Executive Board of the ruling elite. The two parties diverge only in presentation and not on substance. There is absolutely no ideological difference as both parties still believe in the American Empire. And both parties still present to the American people the good image of a democracy at work thereby masking the role of the moneyed elite who are the true rulers of America. The rhetorical clashes between the Republicans and the Democrats centers only on how to maintain American hegemonic role in the world.
However, this year’s election offers an intriguingly potent new dimension: the emergence of a black candidate as a serious contender for the Presidency of the United States of America! For those not well educated in the role Race has played and continue to play in ‘God Own country,’ the emergence of Kenyan-fathered Barack Obama is truly revolutionary. Little wonder than many elderly blacks still think that they are in some dream world. They experienced slavery; all the injustices of segregations, Jim crows and all and the very idea that one of their own today aspire to the highest office in the land still seems to them like a fairy tale.
Consider this: When in 1961 Barack Obama cried his way into this world, many states of the American Union were still very rigidly (and legally) segregated – meaning that white do not mixed with blacks. There were separate facilities for both black and white. Like the apartheid that so thoroughly blighted South Africa, white people in the USA were legally protected for discriminating against black people. Black in many Southern states were barred from entering or eating at restaurants; using public libraries, swimming pools and other facilities. Many black performers could play at big hotels but have to eat at the hotel kitchen since they were not allowed to enter the restaurants. And of course, after their performances they have to hustle back to their black ghettoes since they were disbarred from sleeping in the hotels.
The classic case of the greatest athlete of all time, Mohammed Ali, is very illustrating. After winning the Olympic boxing gold medal, the ‘Lip of Louisiana’ went back expecting a hero welcome in his home state. Ali was, however, to be sorely disappointed as a white waiter cheekily told him that: “We don’t serve Niggers.” Never one to be verbally outpunched, Mohammed Ali retorted: “I don’t eat them either.” In disgust, Ali threw his medal into a river. (I highly recommend Richard Wright’s ‘Black Boy,’ to those who want to know more about the traumatic experiences of black people growing up in segregated America).
Race was and is still a very potent force in America, especially in its politics. Although American corporate media only show you black people in relation to crime, the fact is that American blacks have made their mark in every field of human endeavour where they have been allowed to participate fairly and freely. Almost all the cultures America transmits to the world have been created by black artistes. Can you think of an American music gender apart from Country Music that was not created by Black people?
Which makes racism all the more so stupid and so utterly incomprehensible! The White racists* believe that they are inherently superior to other people. They spend so much money, time and energy accumulating and proclaiming ‘evidences’ of their supposed superiority, yet they are unwilling to put it to a test in a free and fair contest. This is the big paradox of racism: unwillingness of its adherents to test its creed. The question is: if white people genuinely believe in their innate superiority, why do they require so much governmental protection? Why do they spend so much money, time and energy proclaiming it? As Professor Wole Soyinka distinctively puts it: “A Tiger does not need to proclaim its Tigritude.” If I believe that I am so hot, the simple and easy way to prove it is to engage in a free and fair contest. Not so with the racists: With an acute inferiority complex, they need to convince themselves that they are the superior beings.
The white racists believe that black people are of inferior nature (as Thomas Jefferson opined), yet they passed legislation barring the supposedly inferior people from receiving any education and from competing for decent jobs. During slavery Black people were barred from reading anything but the Bible. The white racists in both the USA and South Africa spent huge amount of money to give good education to white children while consigning black children to over-crowded and poorly-funded institutes, and they then turn around to wonder why black children are performing very poorly academically. As Herbert Aptheker wondered: “You cut a man’s tongue and you ask why he is dumb.” Many Southern states simply disallowed black students from receiving education higher than High School. In 1963, it required the intervention of Federal troops before the University of Mississippi would allow a black student.
And shall we mention lynching, albeit briefly? The word was derived from a Virginian Justice of Peace who believed in extrajudicial punishment, Charles Lynch. In many states in the south white mobs simply organized vigilante groups to hunt down and kill black people for any number of reasons or offenses without any process of law. Looking at a white woman (even a white prostitute) is a death sentence for a black male. The vigilantes kill their victims with the knowledge that they will get away with it always; the police simply look the other way. The Ku Klux Klan extensively used lynching to intimidate freed blacks who were voting and assuming political power in many parts of the South. The favorite method of killing was hanging. Tying their victims to the back of a truck and driving him on rough roads is another favorite method to dispatch black male. And please do not think that lynching was a thing of the past: a young black man was recently killed by a gang of white youth who tied to the back of their truck and dragged him until he died.
What is baffling is that the white racists do not deny their unprovoked and undeserved violence against black people, but they ask why black people should continue to pine about it? As any human being who experienced violence suffers a trauma, we have to ask if the racists think that we are outside of human psychology.
This was the environment from which Barack Obama grew and it was from this experience that he grew to triumph over all obstacles and prejudices in order to arrive at a summit in which no black person has ever climbed. This is a no mean achievement. Many blacks were not able to rise above their traumas; they succumb to exist as good-for-nothing drunk - living proof of the racists’ arguments that the victims of their crimes are inferior. Barack Obama did not succumb, thank goodness. He refused to let the appalling conditions of his environment get him down. He went to one of America’s best universities where he was so well regarded that he became the editor of his school law review. Today, just as we offer Nelson Mandela to the world as a MORAL GIANT, we offer Barack Obama as a POLITICAL GIANT. In a world populated by political and intellectual Lilliputians, Obama stands as an eloquent testimony that the human being offers infinite possibilities.
In Europe I tried to tell the racists that Black people do not ask for the moon: we do not even ask for anything extra at all. All we want is a level playing field where each and every human person would compete to the best of his or her knowledge and abilities. We do not believe that we are superior but we do not accept that we are inferior. Why this is difficult for the supposedly superior people to accept is difficult to understand.
Any dispassionate observer who watched the debates between Barack Obama and John Mccain cannot but see that the difference is crystal clear – he was simply too vastly superior to his rival. Urbane, sophisticated, educated, articulate and with a film star good looks, Obama represents the best face any nation can present to the world. He very confidently trounced his rival without humiliating him. He was so good that only the colour on his skin can stop him from becoming the 44th President of the US of A!
In every department Obama is the better candidate: He is young and fit; his rival is a ponderous old man. He is untainted by a scandal; McCain was sanctioned for accepting a bribe. His morality remains unquestioned; his rival has the integrity of a hyena. Obama boasts a solid filial fidelity; let’s not talk about McCain’s filial monkeyshines. His rival’s party records in office stinks – unending wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and now Syria. His rival’s party bad mismanagement of the economy has resulted in a crashed stock market and a collapsed mortgage sector.
Were he white Obama’s electoral victory would have be a foregone conclusion, but this is the United States of America where the colour black is still considered a stigma. Many who could not fathom a black President keep touting McCain supposed experience – they always fail to mention that McCain’s running (heartbeat away from the presidency) is a dumb blonde. Governor Palin’s dumbness makes my child looks like an Astrophysicist. Talking about experience, Mevrouw Palin believe that her state’s sharing a border with Russia is enough foreign policy experience!
As Time Magazine recently wrote of him: “Barack Obama has prospered in this presidential campaign because of the steadiness of his temperament and the judicious quality of his decision-making. They are his best-known qualities. The most important decision he has made — the selection of a running mate — was done carefully, with an exhaustive attention to detail and contemplation of all the possible angles. Two months later, as John McCain's peremptory selection of Governor Sarah Palin has come to seem a liability, it could be argued that Obama's quiet selection of Joe Biden defined the public's choice in the general-election campaign.”
Brother Barack Obama, I salute the audacity of your courage. Whatever happens in this year’s election, your place in history is assured.
*Racism is all about power and domination. There are many Africans and Asians who are racially prejudiced, but no Asian or African has the power to racially oppress another group at the global level. Nowhere on earth do Asians and Africans go around killing people because they are WHITE. For a better treatment of this important subject, I recommend ‘Black Power,’ by Stokely Carmichael, aka Kwame Ture.
The Old Man and the Medal
The Old Man and the Medal*
(for this piece, I am borrowing the title of a book by the great Cameroonian writer, Ferdinand Oyono. I very highly recommend it.)
What type of mental frame are African leaders in when they go to collect their useless awards from Western leaders? A leader from the West would not be unduly impressed by an award from an African leader. Why then do our leaders still feel giddy with excitement when the Imperialists throw a medal at them? Are these leaders so bereft of historical knowledge to know that it was with such gimmicks that the imperialists bamboozled our ignorant chiefs into getting into unholy alliances with them?
Read up your history and study how the wily Europeans wrote ‘treaties’ in their own languages and confused our unlettered chiefs into signing away large swathe of their lands. How else do you think that the Perfidious Albion got hold of such large tracts of African land? No, they didn’t carry it on their back from Europe. They stole it, pure and simple. And they used the crudest tricks in their bags of tricks: bribery and corruption. For a measly mirror and bottle of gin, our Chiefs ignorantly believed in the friendship of the perfidious European. By the time our ignorant Chief finished his bottle of gin and had enough satisfaction studying his image in the mirror, the wily European has already run ahead with the ball.
The fawning media was full of the news that the Queen of Holland has invited President Kufuor to come and spend three days in the low lands and also to address the Dutch bi-camera parliament! What exactly is wrong with African leaders? For those who do not it, the present Dutch government headed by Jan Balkelende is among the most xenophobic and rabidly racist in Europe. What President Kufuor should have done was simply to invite some of the Ghanaian long resident in Holland to come and brief him on their plight in that accursed land.
Balkelende has made it his mission to whiten Holland as far and fast as possible. It was under his leadership that Holland became hellish for Non-European (read White) immigrants. It was under Balkelende’s premiership that the whole Somali community emigrated en-mass to the UK. It was under his stewardship that non-European visitors to Holland must learn the Dutch language in their own country and at their own expense before being granted visa. African immigrants who wish to marry a Dutch citizen must now go back to their own country of origin in order to tie the nuptial tie.
As I wrote recently in the London-based New African magazine, no one with a working knowledge of history ought to be surprised by the current attitude of the Dutch – they were simply following the footsteps of their wretched forebears. The Dutch were the worst slavers during the trans-Atlantic slavery. Their cruelty was so great that it drew the condemnation of even the Spaniards - no one can accuse the Spaniards of being squeamish when it comes to maltreating their own slaves. It must also be remembered that the bastards the Dutch sired on our continent (the Boers in South Africa) were the worst colonialists and also the worst racists in Africa.
I doubt very much if they teach authentic African history at Oxford where President Kufuor had his university education so, maybe we can pardon his ignorance. I also have my doubt whether the motley ass-licking, sycophantic quangoes who are busy singing his praises read much either. If they do they would have heard of the book, “How Europe Underdeveloped Africa,” by the late celebrated Caribbean scholar, Walter Rodney. In my humble opinion, that book should be a compulsory read at all our tertiary institutions.
If they know their history, our badly-educated elite who are today singing the praises of the Albinos and today feel themselves elevated by useless medals Western leaders are putting on their necks will know how much the West contributed to the sorry state Africa is in today. No, I am not excusing the Arabs, but the crimes of Europe are simply just too vast and too horrendous that there simply exist no basis for comparison with any other calamity that has befallen our dear motherland.
Dapper was a Dutch visitor to the ancient Benin kingdom. He wrote prodigious notes where he compared Benin City with the city of Amsterdam. The Europeans came and destroyed the kingdom They sacked and burned the city, looted the palace and treasury (the stolen wealth are still at the British Museum) and their historians came, met the shell of a city and start writing about their savage Africans incapable of thoughts beyond food and sex.
The Dutch came and raped so many women that many of our fine citizens still bear the names of the amoral men who fathered children they do not give a hoot about. Today our President is going to Holland where he, undoubtedly, will sing the praises of the duplicitous Dutch. He will thank them for all the ‘help’ they are rendering to us. He will wine and dine with Queen Beatrix who, has a leading member of the Bilderberg group, is among the shapers of obnoxious Western policies that are devastating our continent and mother earth.
President Kufuor did not know his history and he apparently hasn’t taken the time to read up on it. The Dutch have played a critical and, very often, leading role in the Western Man’s despoliation of the Non-White people. It was in Holland that the Catholic Council of Elders met in the year 1457 to sanction the enslavement of Africans as chattel property. Holland was also the last of the slave nations to abolish slavery.
Johan Anthoniszoon "Jan" van Riebeeck was the man that made South Africa safe for Dutch colonialists. He was a Dutch from the town of Culemborg. Another Dutch whom we should not forget in haste is Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd. Verwoerd was the primary architect of apartheid and was its greatest theoretician. He was a native Dutch before he migrated to South Africa to help in establishing the racial system that so thoroughly blighted the face of that beautiful country. And let it not be forgotten that the Dutch Reformed Church played a pivotal role in sustaining the odious apartheid system until the last dying years. It says so much about the Dutch that their colonial possession in African was the most virulently racist and was also the last to decolonized.
Let’s examine some of the things we can glean from the atrocious past of the Dutch history:
"The Dutch share in the slave-trade was large: in fact, in the seventeenth century, it was the largest. The Dutch West India Company had various settlements on the African coast, and millions of slaves were ferried from there, especially during the time of Dutch occupation of Brazil. In the twelve years (1637-48) they transported no less than 23,163 slaves from Elmina and Loanda, for an amount of 6, 714, 423 guilders and 60 cents, (the Dutch were very precise!) They bought slaves from the Congo for 40 to 50 guilders and sold them in Brazil for 200 to 800 guilders. Certainly a worthwhile business." (J.W. Schulte Nordholt, 'The People that Walk in Darkness'. Ballantine Books, New York. p.10).
Below is how the above-quoted author described the scene from a slave-trade:
“I stopped the carriage at the water-side, to behold a group of human beings, who had strongly attracted my attention... They were a drove of newly imported Negroes, men and women, with a few children, who were just landed from on board a Guinea ship that lay at anchor in the roads, to be sold for slaves. The whole party was such a set of scarcely animated automatons, such a resurrection of skin and bones, as forcibly reminded me of the last trumpet. These objects appeared at that moment to be risen from the grave, or escaped from Surgeons' Hall; and I confess I can give no better description of them, than by comparing them to a walking skeletons covered with a piece of tanned leather.” (J.W. Schulte Nordholt, op. cit. p.8).
That the Dutch were the most brutal of the slave-raiders is attested by the fact
that: "The Dutch had established themselves in Berbice in 1624. During the years 1624 to 1763 they were the cruelest of slave masters. The Dutch slave code was much harsher than the Spanish code (the savagery of the Dutch code is shown by one provision of calculated cruelty: the burning alive of mutinous slaves over a slow fire). The Dutch had no institution comparable to the Spanish audiencia, a tribunal which included four judges. The ruthlessness of the Dutch created the situation that came to a climax in the Berbice slave rebellion." ( 'Marcus Garvey and the vision of Africa,' edited by John Henrik Clarke. Vintage Books, New York. p.19).
And Walter Rodney informed us, "Central and South America gold and silver - mined by Africans - played a crucial role in meeting the need of coin in the expanding capitalist money economy of Western Europe, while African gold was also significant in that respect. AFRICAN GOLD helped the Portuguese to finance further navigation around the Cape of Good Hope and also into Asia ever since the 15th century. AFRICAN GOLD was also the main source for the mintage of Dutch gold coin in the 17th century; HELPING AMSTERDAM TO BECOME THE FINANCIAL CAPITAL OF EUROPE IN THAT PERIOD." (Walter Rodney, ‘How Europe Underdeveloped Africa.’ Bogle-L'Ouverture Publications, London 1972. p.94) - caps are for emphasis.
A few months before the capitalists’ world spectacularly collapsed on them, I read the new book by the ex-Chief Economist of the World Bank, Professor Joseph Stiglitz, “Globalization and its Discontents,” in which he roundly vilified the IMF whose policies he termed ‘bad economics.’ Professor Stiglitz was a believer until he had his epiphany along the way and became the IMF and the World Bank worst critic. I doubt very much if President Kuffuor ever read Professor’s Stiglitz book. I have my doubt if African leaders (save ex South African president Thabo Mbeki) read much
Fifty years of our so-called independence, our leaders still shamelessly junket around the world with begging bowl when there is so much we can do to help ourselves and protect our sovereign dignity. Let me give one specific example: Ghana and her neighbor, Cote D’Ivoire together produce more than half of the world’s cocoa. Nothing on earth, save tunnel vision, stops the leaders of the two countries from forming a Cocoa cartel to set the prices of cocoa just like OPEC is doing. Ghana can easily earn more from her cocoa produce than all the ‘aid’ our leaders are shamelessly soliciting all over the world.
Someone close to president Kuffuor should advice him to get and read Herbert Aptheker’s classic, ‘Laureates of Imperialism.’
PS: According to reports in the Dutch media, the HIGHLIGHT of President Kufuor’s visit was his coming late to a state occasion to lay a wreath in Amsterdam. According to Amsterdam AT5 Television station, our beloved President kept his hosts, including the Dutch Prime Minister and the Mayor of Amsterdam, waiting for good one hour. The Dutch tired of waiting for the African leader in the cold truncated the ceremony to a three minutes affair!
(for this piece, I am borrowing the title of a book by the great Cameroonian writer, Ferdinand Oyono. I very highly recommend it.)
What type of mental frame are African leaders in when they go to collect their useless awards from Western leaders? A leader from the West would not be unduly impressed by an award from an African leader. Why then do our leaders still feel giddy with excitement when the Imperialists throw a medal at them? Are these leaders so bereft of historical knowledge to know that it was with such gimmicks that the imperialists bamboozled our ignorant chiefs into getting into unholy alliances with them?
Read up your history and study how the wily Europeans wrote ‘treaties’ in their own languages and confused our unlettered chiefs into signing away large swathe of their lands. How else do you think that the Perfidious Albion got hold of such large tracts of African land? No, they didn’t carry it on their back from Europe. They stole it, pure and simple. And they used the crudest tricks in their bags of tricks: bribery and corruption. For a measly mirror and bottle of gin, our Chiefs ignorantly believed in the friendship of the perfidious European. By the time our ignorant Chief finished his bottle of gin and had enough satisfaction studying his image in the mirror, the wily European has already run ahead with the ball.
The fawning media was full of the news that the Queen of Holland has invited President Kufuor to come and spend three days in the low lands and also to address the Dutch bi-camera parliament! What exactly is wrong with African leaders? For those who do not it, the present Dutch government headed by Jan Balkelende is among the most xenophobic and rabidly racist in Europe. What President Kufuor should have done was simply to invite some of the Ghanaian long resident in Holland to come and brief him on their plight in that accursed land.
Balkelende has made it his mission to whiten Holland as far and fast as possible. It was under his leadership that Holland became hellish for Non-European (read White) immigrants. It was under Balkelende’s premiership that the whole Somali community emigrated en-mass to the UK. It was under his stewardship that non-European visitors to Holland must learn the Dutch language in their own country and at their own expense before being granted visa. African immigrants who wish to marry a Dutch citizen must now go back to their own country of origin in order to tie the nuptial tie.
As I wrote recently in the London-based New African magazine, no one with a working knowledge of history ought to be surprised by the current attitude of the Dutch – they were simply following the footsteps of their wretched forebears. The Dutch were the worst slavers during the trans-Atlantic slavery. Their cruelty was so great that it drew the condemnation of even the Spaniards - no one can accuse the Spaniards of being squeamish when it comes to maltreating their own slaves. It must also be remembered that the bastards the Dutch sired on our continent (the Boers in South Africa) were the worst colonialists and also the worst racists in Africa.
I doubt very much if they teach authentic African history at Oxford where President Kufuor had his university education so, maybe we can pardon his ignorance. I also have my doubt whether the motley ass-licking, sycophantic quangoes who are busy singing his praises read much either. If they do they would have heard of the book, “How Europe Underdeveloped Africa,” by the late celebrated Caribbean scholar, Walter Rodney. In my humble opinion, that book should be a compulsory read at all our tertiary institutions.
If they know their history, our badly-educated elite who are today singing the praises of the Albinos and today feel themselves elevated by useless medals Western leaders are putting on their necks will know how much the West contributed to the sorry state Africa is in today. No, I am not excusing the Arabs, but the crimes of Europe are simply just too vast and too horrendous that there simply exist no basis for comparison with any other calamity that has befallen our dear motherland.
Dapper was a Dutch visitor to the ancient Benin kingdom. He wrote prodigious notes where he compared Benin City with the city of Amsterdam. The Europeans came and destroyed the kingdom They sacked and burned the city, looted the palace and treasury (the stolen wealth are still at the British Museum) and their historians came, met the shell of a city and start writing about their savage Africans incapable of thoughts beyond food and sex.
The Dutch came and raped so many women that many of our fine citizens still bear the names of the amoral men who fathered children they do not give a hoot about. Today our President is going to Holland where he, undoubtedly, will sing the praises of the duplicitous Dutch. He will thank them for all the ‘help’ they are rendering to us. He will wine and dine with Queen Beatrix who, has a leading member of the Bilderberg group, is among the shapers of obnoxious Western policies that are devastating our continent and mother earth.
President Kufuor did not know his history and he apparently hasn’t taken the time to read up on it. The Dutch have played a critical and, very often, leading role in the Western Man’s despoliation of the Non-White people. It was in Holland that the Catholic Council of Elders met in the year 1457 to sanction the enslavement of Africans as chattel property. Holland was also the last of the slave nations to abolish slavery.
Johan Anthoniszoon "Jan" van Riebeeck was the man that made South Africa safe for Dutch colonialists. He was a Dutch from the town of Culemborg. Another Dutch whom we should not forget in haste is Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd. Verwoerd was the primary architect of apartheid and was its greatest theoretician. He was a native Dutch before he migrated to South Africa to help in establishing the racial system that so thoroughly blighted the face of that beautiful country. And let it not be forgotten that the Dutch Reformed Church played a pivotal role in sustaining the odious apartheid system until the last dying years. It says so much about the Dutch that their colonial possession in African was the most virulently racist and was also the last to decolonized.
Let’s examine some of the things we can glean from the atrocious past of the Dutch history:
"The Dutch share in the slave-trade was large: in fact, in the seventeenth century, it was the largest. The Dutch West India Company had various settlements on the African coast, and millions of slaves were ferried from there, especially during the time of Dutch occupation of Brazil. In the twelve years (1637-48) they transported no less than 23,163 slaves from Elmina and Loanda, for an amount of 6, 714, 423 guilders and 60 cents, (the Dutch were very precise!) They bought slaves from the Congo for 40 to 50 guilders and sold them in Brazil for 200 to 800 guilders. Certainly a worthwhile business." (J.W. Schulte Nordholt, 'The People that Walk in Darkness'. Ballantine Books, New York. p.10).
Below is how the above-quoted author described the scene from a slave-trade:
“I stopped the carriage at the water-side, to behold a group of human beings, who had strongly attracted my attention... They were a drove of newly imported Negroes, men and women, with a few children, who were just landed from on board a Guinea ship that lay at anchor in the roads, to be sold for slaves. The whole party was such a set of scarcely animated automatons, such a resurrection of skin and bones, as forcibly reminded me of the last trumpet. These objects appeared at that moment to be risen from the grave, or escaped from Surgeons' Hall; and I confess I can give no better description of them, than by comparing them to a walking skeletons covered with a piece of tanned leather.” (J.W. Schulte Nordholt, op. cit. p.8).
That the Dutch were the most brutal of the slave-raiders is attested by the fact
that: "The Dutch had established themselves in Berbice in 1624. During the years 1624 to 1763 they were the cruelest of slave masters. The Dutch slave code was much harsher than the Spanish code (the savagery of the Dutch code is shown by one provision of calculated cruelty: the burning alive of mutinous slaves over a slow fire). The Dutch had no institution comparable to the Spanish audiencia, a tribunal which included four judges. The ruthlessness of the Dutch created the situation that came to a climax in the Berbice slave rebellion." ( 'Marcus Garvey and the vision of Africa,' edited by John Henrik Clarke. Vintage Books, New York. p.19).
And Walter Rodney informed us, "Central and South America gold and silver - mined by Africans - played a crucial role in meeting the need of coin in the expanding capitalist money economy of Western Europe, while African gold was also significant in that respect. AFRICAN GOLD helped the Portuguese to finance further navigation around the Cape of Good Hope and also into Asia ever since the 15th century. AFRICAN GOLD was also the main source for the mintage of Dutch gold coin in the 17th century; HELPING AMSTERDAM TO BECOME THE FINANCIAL CAPITAL OF EUROPE IN THAT PERIOD." (Walter Rodney, ‘How Europe Underdeveloped Africa.’ Bogle-L'Ouverture Publications, London 1972. p.94) - caps are for emphasis.
A few months before the capitalists’ world spectacularly collapsed on them, I read the new book by the ex-Chief Economist of the World Bank, Professor Joseph Stiglitz, “Globalization and its Discontents,” in which he roundly vilified the IMF whose policies he termed ‘bad economics.’ Professor Stiglitz was a believer until he had his epiphany along the way and became the IMF and the World Bank worst critic. I doubt very much if President Kuffuor ever read Professor’s Stiglitz book. I have my doubt if African leaders (save ex South African president Thabo Mbeki) read much
Fifty years of our so-called independence, our leaders still shamelessly junket around the world with begging bowl when there is so much we can do to help ourselves and protect our sovereign dignity. Let me give one specific example: Ghana and her neighbor, Cote D’Ivoire together produce more than half of the world’s cocoa. Nothing on earth, save tunnel vision, stops the leaders of the two countries from forming a Cocoa cartel to set the prices of cocoa just like OPEC is doing. Ghana can easily earn more from her cocoa produce than all the ‘aid’ our leaders are shamelessly soliciting all over the world.
Someone close to president Kuffuor should advice him to get and read Herbert Aptheker’s classic, ‘Laureates of Imperialism.’
PS: According to reports in the Dutch media, the HIGHLIGHT of President Kufuor’s visit was his coming late to a state occasion to lay a wreath in Amsterdam. According to Amsterdam AT5 Television station, our beloved President kept his hosts, including the Dutch Prime Minister and the Mayor of Amsterdam, waiting for good one hour. The Dutch tired of waiting for the African leader in the cold truncated the ceremony to a three minutes affair!
The Three Puppeteers
The Three Puppeteers
“As Zimbabwe descends into anarchy and chaos, land is irrationally seized from productive farmers, we are told. President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe is portrayed as a dictator bent on driving his nation into starvation and economic disaster while benevolent U.S. and British leaders call for democracy and human rights. These are the images presented by Western news reports, intended to persuade the public to support an interventionist policy. As always when the West targets a foreign leader for removal, news reports ignore complexity and context, while the real motivations for intervention remain hidden. Concern for democracy and human rights is selective and it is always the nation that displays too much independence that evokes concern, even in cases of a functioning multiparty system and wide ranging media. On the other hand, no one calls for democracy and human rights in oppressive nations as long as the political environment is conducive to Western investment. Saudi Arabia, for example, holds no elections and imposes an abusive oppression on the lives of its women. The pattern is consistent. Any nation that embarks on a path diverging from Western corporate interests and places the needs of its people over the demands of Western capital finds itself the target of destabilization, sanctions and intervention. History and context are essential for understanding political events, and it is precisely these aspects that are lacking in Western news reports.” - Gregory Elich, ‘Zimbabwe under Siege,’ - http://www.swans.com/library/art8/elich004.html
“Behind the simple and humane façade, Carter has a strategy to reverse progressive regimes and undermine insurgent democrats. Carter and his "team" from his Center probe and locate weaknesses among insecure democrats, particularly those under threat by US-backed opponents and thus vulnerable to Carter's appeals to be "pragmatic" and "realistic"--meaning his barely disguised arguments to accept fraudulent electoral results and gross US electoral intervention. Carter is a quiet master in mixing democratic rhetoric with manipulation of susceptible democrats who think he shares their democratic politics. The international mass media feature his self-promoted overseas trips to conflictual countries and above all his phony "human rights" record. The mass media provide Carter with the appearance of democratic credentials.” James Petras, “The Truth about Jimmy Carter.”
“To attempt to grasp the Zimbabwean predicament without falling for, or being naïvely suckered by, the well orchestrated and demonizing propaganda of the rapacious western interests -- those predators who roam the globe to enrich themselves and their cronies and supply our guzzling economies with the goodies that fatten us and end up wasted in overflowing landfills -- one must not ignore history, particularly that of colonialism and the subsequent but rarely fully implemented decolonization; the savagery of the former and the messy and painful process of the latter.” - Gilles d'Aymery , “The Anti-Mugabe Brigade.”
According to the BBC and the other Western corporate media, the tyrant of Harare, Robert Mugabe, decided to humiliate ‘so-called’ Elders comprising Former US President Jimmy Carter, former UN Boss Kofi Annan and Nelson Mandela’s wife, Gracia Mandela, who also happened to be the wife of Mozambican charismatic liberation war hero, Samora Marcel.
According to these reports the trio was trying to find solutions to the so-called humanitarian crises in authoritarian and despotic Zimbabwe. Unless I am missing something deep, I have to agree with the Zimbabwean authority’s refusal to allow them in. The so-called elders are either out rightly stupid or they are outright liars or both. They are surely motivated by ulterior motives that have nothing to do with seeking truth and justice and absolutely nothing to do with humanitarian concerns. Perhaps they are there to promote the ill-disguised Western policy of regime change.
African mores frowned on speaking ill of the dead, but some truth need to be told. Before her death I was asked what I thought of Lady Diana’s so-called humanitarian efforts. My reply was that she’s only earning her pay by promoting western views and ideas. Diana did nothing but lent her face to the charade of an altruistic and humanitarian West. She was the façade the West threw in our faces to mask her (West) unbridled greed and violence against the non-Western world. Diana knew where the bombs, the guns, the helicopters and the mines that were killing and maiming lives were made. Why didn’t she go to any of these factories and convince the manufacturers to turn their swords into plowshare? No, she didn’t. All that we saw were her pancacked face with a mechanical smile pasted on going around hospitals in her so-called humanitarian’s trips. She smiled and shook hands with victims of Western-sponsored aggressions and for this they say we should dance with joy. Many were Africans who shed copious tears at her death; yet the millions of victims of Western aggression will not stir them to tears! What a hypocritical world we live in!
I have always asked why US Presidents discover humanity only after they have left office. While in office American Presidents wield awesome powers which they have used to support tyrants, manufacture proxy wars in order to maintain Western Capital stranglehold on the world. No American leader supported any of African wars of independence\liberation. They, without exception, took sides with all the enemies of Africa. Today, we have Jimmy Carter being promoted as Apostle of Peace and in Southern Africa for that matter. And in Zimbabwe of all places!
For those who did not know it, Jimmy Carter’s Presidency (1977-1981) spanned the crucial period of Zimbabwean and Southern African liberation wars. Jimmy Carter pursued the same arrogant, imperial, anti-African and anti-human foreign policies of US and Western governments. It is a policy that it dedicated to the glorification and consolidation of international capital. In the Southern Africa region, American and West European finance helped to sustain the odious settler-regimes in Rhodesia, Namibia and South Africa. America and her allies abused their UN veto powers to protect the colonial regimes in Africa. The phony proxy wars the West claimed to have fought against communism ensured that Angolans, Congolese, Somalis and Mozambicans continue to live wretched lives until today. The argument then was that the stiff-necked Boers and Rhodesians were the bulwark against communism.
Jimmy Carter and his team rigidly sided with the oppressors and the killers of Africans. None of the liberation movements enjoy the support any US government, Jimmy carter’s included. The West allowed the Boers to acquire its (West’s) war-making technologies, so much so that the Boers built and tested nuclear bombs with the West looking the other way. Revelations in post-apartheid inquiries revealed that the Boers extensively used biological and chemical weapons against its enemies, again with the West looking unconcerned. In their book,’ Fighting for apartheid, a job for life,’ the authors revealed how Western nations allowed their nationals to obtain South African citizenship which obliged them to serve in the apartheid war machines that were killing Africans all over the place.
Today, Jimmy Carter, the wretched hypocrite with his phony smiles and phonier humanitarian credentials, is travelling around the world as Apostle of Peace. I won’t be surprised if in few years the Dubya, the BUSHman himself goes around the world as a UN envoy on Peace and Humanitarian affairs!
It is difficult for me to think of Kofi Annan without remembering Malcolm X phrase about the House Nigger. Everything about Kofi Annan typifies the concept of a House Nigger – always eager to please the Master. Everything about Mr. Annan stank of rank Uncle Tomism – Uncle Tom was the character in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel, ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin,’ who is ever solicitous to white people. The House Nigger takes the welfare of the Master more seriously than the Master himself. Whenever the Master sneezes the House Nigger catches cold. Just everything about Kofi Annan is loathsome.
At least it is on record that Egyptian Boutros Boutros Ghali declined to surrender his principles to satisfy the West’s desires for control of the UN. Mr. Ghali refused to become a puppet on the string of Western manipulations, hence his failure to secure a second term as UN Secretary General. Not so, our Mr. Annan. The man will dance to any tune as long as he gets a bone thrown at him. Here was a man whose love of office made him refused to leave office even when Bush and co made his position untenable. Bush and co declared the UN irrelevant and went ahead to wage an unsanctioned war of aggression against a member of the UN; yet Mr. Annan lacked the elementary dignity to refused to occupy a sham office. And we ought not to forget the role our Mr. Annan played in the death of (estimate ranges from eight hundred to one million) Rwandans. Mr. Annan was at the head of impotent UN Peace-keeping Forces that refused to protect Africans at their hours of direst needs. Any man with an iota of self-respect would have buried his head in shame at that monumental failure and resign in disgrace. Not so, our Mr. Annan. He somehow wormed his ways into the pinnacle of the UN where he did his best to become the West’s YESMAN. And we shouldn’t forget the cloud of scandal that hung over his head at the UN.
The so-called ‘Elders’ do not look stupid to me and I bet that they have the resources at their disposal to arrive at the truth if they so desire. Before the cruel sanction the West imposed on it, Zimbabwe was able to feed, cloth, house and educate its citizens. Zimbabweans were adjudged the best educated Africans in pre-sanctions days. The country ranked among the cleanest with the most disciplined civil service. Zimbabwe was the cynosure of the region. Just like Pre-sanction Iraq was the most developed in the Middle East, so was Zimbabwe in the Southern Africa region, save for South Africa.
Years after the so-called smart sanctions the West imposed on its erstwhile client, Saddam Hussein, Iraq was reduced to a country on its knees with Iraqis reduced to scavenging for food like vermin, and with millions of Iraqi children dying from hunger and starvation and diseases. Our Mr. Annan was the head of an organization under whose purview millions of Iraqis were sentenced to untimely death. And it is the same man with absolutely no shame that today goes around the world purporting to be engaged in some humanitarian enterprise! Give me more than a break, please!
These three so-called elders must have some influence in the capitals where the punishing sanctions were imposed on Zimbabwe. Why don’t they go there to make and plead that the inhuman and illegal sanctions are killing and destroying innocent Zimbabweans and should be lifted? Why do they have to go the victims of these heinous crimes and pretend to be concerned? Mugabe might be part of the problem, but he is not the whole problem. He was able to feed his people and give them good health before sanctions were imposed. Carter, Annan and Mrs. Mandela cannot run away from this simple truth. They should tell us what crimes Zimbabwe committed apart from trying to right an historical injustice of land theft.
If the trio are genuinely interested in the plight of Zimbabweans, let Mr. Carter, Mr. Annan and Mrs. Mandela take their case to Washington, London and Brussels and persuade those vampires that imposed the illegal, undeserved and inhuman sanctions to lift them. Let them persuade the puppet masters in those capitals to desist from their evil path and get it into their skulls that Africa is tired of being manipulated. They should stop attempting to decide who our leaders and heroes should be.
The argument here is not whether or not President Robert Mugabe has outlived his usefulness to his people, the point is that the West, through it media, should stop throwing dust us into our faces. We have had enough of Westerners masking their selfish interests in humanitarian halo. And we Africans are matured enough to choose our heroes and, please, Mr. Annan is singularly and signally unqualified to be an African hero.
Nuff said!
Quotable quotes:
"Robert Mugabe is portrayed as the prince of darkness, but when whites expel black people from their lands, nobody gives a damn." And when non-white people are dispossessed, "[t]hese are dark-skinned people being expelled by whites, rather than whites being expelled by black people. They are, as such, assuming their rightful place, as invisible obstacles to the rich world's projects. Mugabe is a monster because he has usurped the natural order." And so, "[t]he most evil man on earth, besides Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden, is Robert Mugabe, the president of Zimbabwe. That, at least, is the view of most of the western world's press." George Monbiot, "Our Racist Demonology;" The Guardian; August 13, 2002; http://www.monbiot.com/dsp_article.cfm?article_id=525
"[b]ad things should obviously not happen to white people. How else to explain the indignation? The knowledge of unspeakable horrors inflicted on black Africans is seldom allowed to interfere with our peace of mind, as if they were in the natural order of things. Over there it is hot, zebras live in the wild, and bad things happen to blacks. But when white families are dispossessed, it is another matter altogether."
"'[p]lease don't write all the usual old clichés about swimming pools, servants and gin and tonics,' Zimbabwean whites told the journalist Ian Jack in 1977. That is what he found, though, and that is what many of the whites moved there for. Few families arrived 100 years ago, as it is claimed; most were postwar arrivals looking for sunshine and a higher standard of living than they could possibly hope for at home. They say they have been 'good' for Zimbabwe, and indeed they have. If you own rich land and pay your workers a pittance, how could you not be productive?" Decca Aitkenhead, "Remnants of Empire: Pity the poor Zimbabwean farmer, deprived of his swimming pool, servants and gin and tonic;" - http://www.raceandhistory.com/Zimbabwe/23082001.htm
“As Zimbabwe descends into anarchy and chaos, land is irrationally seized from productive farmers, we are told. President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe is portrayed as a dictator bent on driving his nation into starvation and economic disaster while benevolent U.S. and British leaders call for democracy and human rights. These are the images presented by Western news reports, intended to persuade the public to support an interventionist policy. As always when the West targets a foreign leader for removal, news reports ignore complexity and context, while the real motivations for intervention remain hidden. Concern for democracy and human rights is selective and it is always the nation that displays too much independence that evokes concern, even in cases of a functioning multiparty system and wide ranging media. On the other hand, no one calls for democracy and human rights in oppressive nations as long as the political environment is conducive to Western investment. Saudi Arabia, for example, holds no elections and imposes an abusive oppression on the lives of its women. The pattern is consistent. Any nation that embarks on a path diverging from Western corporate interests and places the needs of its people over the demands of Western capital finds itself the target of destabilization, sanctions and intervention. History and context are essential for understanding political events, and it is precisely these aspects that are lacking in Western news reports.” - Gregory Elich, ‘Zimbabwe under Siege,’ - http://www.swans.com/library/art8/elich004.html
“Behind the simple and humane façade, Carter has a strategy to reverse progressive regimes and undermine insurgent democrats. Carter and his "team" from his Center probe and locate weaknesses among insecure democrats, particularly those under threat by US-backed opponents and thus vulnerable to Carter's appeals to be "pragmatic" and "realistic"--meaning his barely disguised arguments to accept fraudulent electoral results and gross US electoral intervention. Carter is a quiet master in mixing democratic rhetoric with manipulation of susceptible democrats who think he shares their democratic politics. The international mass media feature his self-promoted overseas trips to conflictual countries and above all his phony "human rights" record. The mass media provide Carter with the appearance of democratic credentials.” James Petras, “The Truth about Jimmy Carter.”
“To attempt to grasp the Zimbabwean predicament without falling for, or being naïvely suckered by, the well orchestrated and demonizing propaganda of the rapacious western interests -- those predators who roam the globe to enrich themselves and their cronies and supply our guzzling economies with the goodies that fatten us and end up wasted in overflowing landfills -- one must not ignore history, particularly that of colonialism and the subsequent but rarely fully implemented decolonization; the savagery of the former and the messy and painful process of the latter.” - Gilles d'Aymery , “The Anti-Mugabe Brigade.”
According to the BBC and the other Western corporate media, the tyrant of Harare, Robert Mugabe, decided to humiliate ‘so-called’ Elders comprising Former US President Jimmy Carter, former UN Boss Kofi Annan and Nelson Mandela’s wife, Gracia Mandela, who also happened to be the wife of Mozambican charismatic liberation war hero, Samora Marcel.
According to these reports the trio was trying to find solutions to the so-called humanitarian crises in authoritarian and despotic Zimbabwe. Unless I am missing something deep, I have to agree with the Zimbabwean authority’s refusal to allow them in. The so-called elders are either out rightly stupid or they are outright liars or both. They are surely motivated by ulterior motives that have nothing to do with seeking truth and justice and absolutely nothing to do with humanitarian concerns. Perhaps they are there to promote the ill-disguised Western policy of regime change.
African mores frowned on speaking ill of the dead, but some truth need to be told. Before her death I was asked what I thought of Lady Diana’s so-called humanitarian efforts. My reply was that she’s only earning her pay by promoting western views and ideas. Diana did nothing but lent her face to the charade of an altruistic and humanitarian West. She was the façade the West threw in our faces to mask her (West) unbridled greed and violence against the non-Western world. Diana knew where the bombs, the guns, the helicopters and the mines that were killing and maiming lives were made. Why didn’t she go to any of these factories and convince the manufacturers to turn their swords into plowshare? No, she didn’t. All that we saw were her pancacked face with a mechanical smile pasted on going around hospitals in her so-called humanitarian’s trips. She smiled and shook hands with victims of Western-sponsored aggressions and for this they say we should dance with joy. Many were Africans who shed copious tears at her death; yet the millions of victims of Western aggression will not stir them to tears! What a hypocritical world we live in!
I have always asked why US Presidents discover humanity only after they have left office. While in office American Presidents wield awesome powers which they have used to support tyrants, manufacture proxy wars in order to maintain Western Capital stranglehold on the world. No American leader supported any of African wars of independence\liberation. They, without exception, took sides with all the enemies of Africa. Today, we have Jimmy Carter being promoted as Apostle of Peace and in Southern Africa for that matter. And in Zimbabwe of all places!
For those who did not know it, Jimmy Carter’s Presidency (1977-1981) spanned the crucial period of Zimbabwean and Southern African liberation wars. Jimmy Carter pursued the same arrogant, imperial, anti-African and anti-human foreign policies of US and Western governments. It is a policy that it dedicated to the glorification and consolidation of international capital. In the Southern Africa region, American and West European finance helped to sustain the odious settler-regimes in Rhodesia, Namibia and South Africa. America and her allies abused their UN veto powers to protect the colonial regimes in Africa. The phony proxy wars the West claimed to have fought against communism ensured that Angolans, Congolese, Somalis and Mozambicans continue to live wretched lives until today. The argument then was that the stiff-necked Boers and Rhodesians were the bulwark against communism.
Jimmy Carter and his team rigidly sided with the oppressors and the killers of Africans. None of the liberation movements enjoy the support any US government, Jimmy carter’s included. The West allowed the Boers to acquire its (West’s) war-making technologies, so much so that the Boers built and tested nuclear bombs with the West looking the other way. Revelations in post-apartheid inquiries revealed that the Boers extensively used biological and chemical weapons against its enemies, again with the West looking unconcerned. In their book,’ Fighting for apartheid, a job for life,’ the authors revealed how Western nations allowed their nationals to obtain South African citizenship which obliged them to serve in the apartheid war machines that were killing Africans all over the place.
Today, Jimmy Carter, the wretched hypocrite with his phony smiles and phonier humanitarian credentials, is travelling around the world as Apostle of Peace. I won’t be surprised if in few years the Dubya, the BUSHman himself goes around the world as a UN envoy on Peace and Humanitarian affairs!
It is difficult for me to think of Kofi Annan without remembering Malcolm X phrase about the House Nigger. Everything about Kofi Annan typifies the concept of a House Nigger – always eager to please the Master. Everything about Mr. Annan stank of rank Uncle Tomism – Uncle Tom was the character in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel, ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin,’ who is ever solicitous to white people. The House Nigger takes the welfare of the Master more seriously than the Master himself. Whenever the Master sneezes the House Nigger catches cold. Just everything about Kofi Annan is loathsome.
At least it is on record that Egyptian Boutros Boutros Ghali declined to surrender his principles to satisfy the West’s desires for control of the UN. Mr. Ghali refused to become a puppet on the string of Western manipulations, hence his failure to secure a second term as UN Secretary General. Not so, our Mr. Annan. The man will dance to any tune as long as he gets a bone thrown at him. Here was a man whose love of office made him refused to leave office even when Bush and co made his position untenable. Bush and co declared the UN irrelevant and went ahead to wage an unsanctioned war of aggression against a member of the UN; yet Mr. Annan lacked the elementary dignity to refused to occupy a sham office. And we ought not to forget the role our Mr. Annan played in the death of (estimate ranges from eight hundred to one million) Rwandans. Mr. Annan was at the head of impotent UN Peace-keeping Forces that refused to protect Africans at their hours of direst needs. Any man with an iota of self-respect would have buried his head in shame at that monumental failure and resign in disgrace. Not so, our Mr. Annan. He somehow wormed his ways into the pinnacle of the UN where he did his best to become the West’s YESMAN. And we shouldn’t forget the cloud of scandal that hung over his head at the UN.
The so-called ‘Elders’ do not look stupid to me and I bet that they have the resources at their disposal to arrive at the truth if they so desire. Before the cruel sanction the West imposed on it, Zimbabwe was able to feed, cloth, house and educate its citizens. Zimbabweans were adjudged the best educated Africans in pre-sanctions days. The country ranked among the cleanest with the most disciplined civil service. Zimbabwe was the cynosure of the region. Just like Pre-sanction Iraq was the most developed in the Middle East, so was Zimbabwe in the Southern Africa region, save for South Africa.
Years after the so-called smart sanctions the West imposed on its erstwhile client, Saddam Hussein, Iraq was reduced to a country on its knees with Iraqis reduced to scavenging for food like vermin, and with millions of Iraqi children dying from hunger and starvation and diseases. Our Mr. Annan was the head of an organization under whose purview millions of Iraqis were sentenced to untimely death. And it is the same man with absolutely no shame that today goes around the world purporting to be engaged in some humanitarian enterprise! Give me more than a break, please!
These three so-called elders must have some influence in the capitals where the punishing sanctions were imposed on Zimbabwe. Why don’t they go there to make and plead that the inhuman and illegal sanctions are killing and destroying innocent Zimbabweans and should be lifted? Why do they have to go the victims of these heinous crimes and pretend to be concerned? Mugabe might be part of the problem, but he is not the whole problem. He was able to feed his people and give them good health before sanctions were imposed. Carter, Annan and Mrs. Mandela cannot run away from this simple truth. They should tell us what crimes Zimbabwe committed apart from trying to right an historical injustice of land theft.
If the trio are genuinely interested in the plight of Zimbabweans, let Mr. Carter, Mr. Annan and Mrs. Mandela take their case to Washington, London and Brussels and persuade those vampires that imposed the illegal, undeserved and inhuman sanctions to lift them. Let them persuade the puppet masters in those capitals to desist from their evil path and get it into their skulls that Africa is tired of being manipulated. They should stop attempting to decide who our leaders and heroes should be.
The argument here is not whether or not President Robert Mugabe has outlived his usefulness to his people, the point is that the West, through it media, should stop throwing dust us into our faces. We have had enough of Westerners masking their selfish interests in humanitarian halo. And we Africans are matured enough to choose our heroes and, please, Mr. Annan is singularly and signally unqualified to be an African hero.
Nuff said!
Quotable quotes:
"Robert Mugabe is portrayed as the prince of darkness, but when whites expel black people from their lands, nobody gives a damn." And when non-white people are dispossessed, "[t]hese are dark-skinned people being expelled by whites, rather than whites being expelled by black people. They are, as such, assuming their rightful place, as invisible obstacles to the rich world's projects. Mugabe is a monster because he has usurped the natural order." And so, "[t]he most evil man on earth, besides Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden, is Robert Mugabe, the president of Zimbabwe. That, at least, is the view of most of the western world's press." George Monbiot, "Our Racist Demonology;" The Guardian; August 13, 2002; http://www.monbiot.com/dsp_article.cfm?article_id=525
"[b]ad things should obviously not happen to white people. How else to explain the indignation? The knowledge of unspeakable horrors inflicted on black Africans is seldom allowed to interfere with our peace of mind, as if they were in the natural order of things. Over there it is hot, zebras live in the wild, and bad things happen to blacks. But when white families are dispossessed, it is another matter altogether."
"'[p]lease don't write all the usual old clichés about swimming pools, servants and gin and tonics,' Zimbabwean whites told the journalist Ian Jack in 1977. That is what he found, though, and that is what many of the whites moved there for. Few families arrived 100 years ago, as it is claimed; most were postwar arrivals looking for sunshine and a higher standard of living than they could possibly hope for at home. They say they have been 'good' for Zimbabwe, and indeed they have. If you own rich land and pay your workers a pittance, how could you not be productive?" Decca Aitkenhead, "Remnants of Empire: Pity the poor Zimbabwean farmer, deprived of his swimming pool, servants and gin and tonic;" - http://www.raceandhistory.com/Zimbabwe/23082001.htm
SMS: Superpower Messaging System
SMS: Superpower Messaging System
In times gone by, when a Potentate felt sufficiently aggrieved by the action or inaction of a fellow sovereign, he usually summons his scribe and dictate a missive. The missives grew progressively belligerent until outstanding issues are resolved in one of two ways: war or successful peaceful resolution.
In those lofty days, war is a very serious business. No, it is not a cavalier matter that is hastily resorted to. Look at it this way: It has to be serious business because in those days when men were men Potentates invariably lead their troops in battle and right there at the front. And since the perks and appurtenances of office are so abundant that no same mortar would want to happily lose it, Potentates very carefully choose when to rush into battle. Ok, now and then you have some crazy bananas who do not give a hoot about their own necks much less about the necks of the hoi polloi, but generally Potentates huffed and puffed awhile before deciding on going to war.
But Homo Sapiens have made huge strides. What with all our technologies and things, eh? Today, message exchanges between and among Potentates have taken giant strides since those days of scribes penning threatening letters.
Today when warlord George Bush want to send a powerful message to a foe, say the leader of Iran, the setting usually goes something like this. Old George summons his War council comprising his Chief Warlord in the form of the Secretary of Defense. His Ambassador Extraordinaire in the person of the Secretary of State is also in attendances so will the National Security Advisor. Others will be in attendance but we can regard those mentioned as the crème de la creme – the Roundtable guys and gals.
Bush: There are men and people out there who can do us great harm, so do we. How do we make sure that they get the message?
Secretary of State (SS): Mr. President, who exactly do we have in mind?
Secretary of Defense (SD): The Afghan insurgents, naturally?
National Security Advisor (NSA): It has to be Iraq, the remnants of Al-Qaeda still constitute serious nuisance to our folks.
Bush: What! I am surrounded by clowns who cannot grasp the monumentality of the threat posed by the new agro around the corner? Why am I the only one who perceive Iran as the new wrongo? Do the Iranians have the sovereign rights to develop nuclear programmes? Yes they have, and it is in their interest, eh, uh, to maintain a peaceful …
SD: Do you think that we need to send a strong message to the Mullahs?
SS: Over what?
Bush: No, no, em, we cannot tolerate a nuclear Iran.
NSA: That would be intolerable as it poses a fundamental threat to our vital interests. Fifty percent of the free world oil passes through Strait of Homuz and a nuclear-armed Iran can easily choke us off.
SS: Are we not assuming here that the Iranians are suicidal. Nothing in their history, which I have studied delicately, indicates that they are suicidal gamblers. On the contrary, they are very cautious pragmatists in spite of all the noises they are making to placate their people.
SD: Do you mean that the threat against Israel shouldn’t be taken seriously?
Bush: We cannot allow Iran to wipe Israel off the face of the nation, eh, map, em, eh…, world
NSA: It would be Nazism all over again.
SD: Our friends in the region are jittery and they are all clamoring for action.
NSA: The Israelis are seriously rattled.
Bush: The way, em, uh, I … see it. Ehm, we need serious action here before they are mis-represent our resolve. We need to send a powerful message. Israel cannot be allowed to develop weapon of mass inhumanity which we threaten the Jews state, our ally…
SS: Mr. President, it is Iran we are discussing.
NSA: And they have ceased using our dollars for their oil trades.
SS: So would I if I’m in their shoes. Our dollars is not what it used to be.
SD: What we shouldn’t overlook here is the Domino factor of the Iranian action. If we fail to act decisively to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons know-how, every banana republic in the world will start poking its nose at us. What do we do then?
SS: The Iranians already possess the know-how. What is stopping them developing is their own logical calculation of what is in their best self-interest. We can wipe them off the face of the earth. They know it and we know it. And they know that we know that they know. And so do the Israelis. They are religious fanatics but they are certainly not foolish.
Bush: But are we not forgetting the Scrabble Effect? I love scrabble…
NSA: It is Domino, sir.
Bush: Oh, I didn’t know the Iranians play Domino, eh!
SS: It is an expression, sir. It means…
Bush: I know what an expression means… But how do we make sure that they stop mis-underestimating us?
SS: I would say that they have been rather too cautious not to offend us.
SD: What do you call the entire staggering diplomatic swagger they have been putting on?
SS: Do we have to respond to every move made by politicians who looking to win a few votes in their land?
Bush: But how do we help the Iranish people to help themselves? We must strive to move the frontiers of liberty and freedom and, em, eh, demoncra, democratic and good governance into Arabia.
SS: I think the Iranians will object to being called Arabs?
Bush: Democracy knows no frontiers, Arabs or no Arabs. We must help to expand the touch, eh, light, em, torch of liberty which must not be inextinguishable. It is not we White Methodist folks alone who knows the joy of freedom. It is the gift of mankind, and women too.
NSA: The Israelis have made it clear that they are going to take action with or without us. That’s bound to rattle our friends in the region. The Egyptian and Omani Presidents are already burning good copper on the Hotline.
Bush: What! We certainly cannot allow those Zionist hotheads in Jericho to preempt us. I recommend that we immediately send a powerful message to the Iranish leadership, what are our options?
SS: I think the Israelis will strongly object to being called Zionist Hotheads. And their capital is Jerusalem; Jericho is a city in disputed Palestine, in the West Bank to be exact. Do you wish that I make a case at the Security Council?
NSA: That would unnecessarily be prolonging affairs not with the Russians in their current nasty funk. We cannot even count on the support of our so-called allies in NATO; they would stick it to us so that they can continue their old world game. We cannot even count on our new friends in Poland and Georgia.
Bush: What, Georgia will follow our lead. I know Governor Palin personally; I will get on the wire to him later and straighten things out. What to do about those Polacks?
NSA: We can let them have the new SATINT on Russian forces?
BUSH: SATINT, where is that?
SD: SATINIT is SATellite INTelligence. They refer to pictures from our orbiting military satellite. Satellites are…
BUSH: Gosh, I sure know what a satellite is. I used to fly a kite when I was a kid.
SS: They are hardly the same thing. Should I consult our NATO allies and canvass their opinion?
Bush: We cannot let the history of the history, em… let judgment accuse us of probasti, no, eh, abstenation. What do you guys say we send a few cruise missiles to Baghdad so that those sheep heads will know that we mean business. Nobody mess up with us.
SS: Baghdad?
NSA: You meant Teheran, Mr. President.
Bush: Tirani, or wherever those Al-Qaeda fundamentalists are hiding their Camel heads.
SD: We have got the Fifth and Sixth Fleet in the region. And there are two or three Battle groups that can be called upon in a jiffy.
SS: We shouldn’t be hasty in these matters. The Atomic Agency is still talking to the Iranians. And convincing the international community would be a hard sell given the Iraqi debacle. No one will believe us.
Bush: We allow the enemy to take the battle to us at our own peril; that is the number one, undermental, uh, fundamental military strategy. Offense is the best defense, according to history historians, em, and military historians. Remember that I am a war President.
SD: Right on mark, Mr. President. We can take Teheran out tonight. Tomorrow morning we begin a saturated carpet-bombing that will reduce Iran to the Ice age.
NSA: We can begin crippling their communications immediately.
Bush: That would be wonderful. Marvelous. We shall do all within our hands and powers to extend the frontiers of liberty.
PS: How on earth do Western leaders get away with their vast crimes? In other societies, War Criminals like George Bush would be languishing in jail or facing serious criminal charges. No one will ever know how many innocent Iraqis or Afghans this Moron in the White House sent unto painful, untimely death. What we know, however, is that the Charles Taylor’s crimes pale in comparison to the vast crimes of this imbecilic 43rd President of the USA.
PSS: Let’s all hope and pray that Mr. Barack Obama will not don the toga of War President. That he shall learn to beat the American sword into ploughshare, and help restore peace, friendship and harmony throughout the world.
In times gone by, when a Potentate felt sufficiently aggrieved by the action or inaction of a fellow sovereign, he usually summons his scribe and dictate a missive. The missives grew progressively belligerent until outstanding issues are resolved in one of two ways: war or successful peaceful resolution.
In those lofty days, war is a very serious business. No, it is not a cavalier matter that is hastily resorted to. Look at it this way: It has to be serious business because in those days when men were men Potentates invariably lead their troops in battle and right there at the front. And since the perks and appurtenances of office are so abundant that no same mortar would want to happily lose it, Potentates very carefully choose when to rush into battle. Ok, now and then you have some crazy bananas who do not give a hoot about their own necks much less about the necks of the hoi polloi, but generally Potentates huffed and puffed awhile before deciding on going to war.
But Homo Sapiens have made huge strides. What with all our technologies and things, eh? Today, message exchanges between and among Potentates have taken giant strides since those days of scribes penning threatening letters.
Today when warlord George Bush want to send a powerful message to a foe, say the leader of Iran, the setting usually goes something like this. Old George summons his War council comprising his Chief Warlord in the form of the Secretary of Defense. His Ambassador Extraordinaire in the person of the Secretary of State is also in attendances so will the National Security Advisor. Others will be in attendance but we can regard those mentioned as the crème de la creme – the Roundtable guys and gals.
Bush: There are men and people out there who can do us great harm, so do we. How do we make sure that they get the message?
Secretary of State (SS): Mr. President, who exactly do we have in mind?
Secretary of Defense (SD): The Afghan insurgents, naturally?
National Security Advisor (NSA): It has to be Iraq, the remnants of Al-Qaeda still constitute serious nuisance to our folks.
Bush: What! I am surrounded by clowns who cannot grasp the monumentality of the threat posed by the new agro around the corner? Why am I the only one who perceive Iran as the new wrongo? Do the Iranians have the sovereign rights to develop nuclear programmes? Yes they have, and it is in their interest, eh, uh, to maintain a peaceful …
SD: Do you think that we need to send a strong message to the Mullahs?
SS: Over what?
Bush: No, no, em, we cannot tolerate a nuclear Iran.
NSA: That would be intolerable as it poses a fundamental threat to our vital interests. Fifty percent of the free world oil passes through Strait of Homuz and a nuclear-armed Iran can easily choke us off.
SS: Are we not assuming here that the Iranians are suicidal. Nothing in their history, which I have studied delicately, indicates that they are suicidal gamblers. On the contrary, they are very cautious pragmatists in spite of all the noises they are making to placate their people.
SD: Do you mean that the threat against Israel shouldn’t be taken seriously?
Bush: We cannot allow Iran to wipe Israel off the face of the nation, eh, map, em, eh…, world
NSA: It would be Nazism all over again.
SD: Our friends in the region are jittery and they are all clamoring for action.
NSA: The Israelis are seriously rattled.
Bush: The way, em, uh, I … see it. Ehm, we need serious action here before they are mis-represent our resolve. We need to send a powerful message. Israel cannot be allowed to develop weapon of mass inhumanity which we threaten the Jews state, our ally…
SS: Mr. President, it is Iran we are discussing.
NSA: And they have ceased using our dollars for their oil trades.
SS: So would I if I’m in their shoes. Our dollars is not what it used to be.
SD: What we shouldn’t overlook here is the Domino factor of the Iranian action. If we fail to act decisively to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons know-how, every banana republic in the world will start poking its nose at us. What do we do then?
SS: The Iranians already possess the know-how. What is stopping them developing is their own logical calculation of what is in their best self-interest. We can wipe them off the face of the earth. They know it and we know it. And they know that we know that they know. And so do the Israelis. They are religious fanatics but they are certainly not foolish.
Bush: But are we not forgetting the Scrabble Effect? I love scrabble…
NSA: It is Domino, sir.
Bush: Oh, I didn’t know the Iranians play Domino, eh!
SS: It is an expression, sir. It means…
Bush: I know what an expression means… But how do we make sure that they stop mis-underestimating us?
SS: I would say that they have been rather too cautious not to offend us.
SD: What do you call the entire staggering diplomatic swagger they have been putting on?
SS: Do we have to respond to every move made by politicians who looking to win a few votes in their land?
Bush: But how do we help the Iranish people to help themselves? We must strive to move the frontiers of liberty and freedom and, em, eh, demoncra, democratic and good governance into Arabia.
SS: I think the Iranians will object to being called Arabs?
Bush: Democracy knows no frontiers, Arabs or no Arabs. We must help to expand the touch, eh, light, em, torch of liberty which must not be inextinguishable. It is not we White Methodist folks alone who knows the joy of freedom. It is the gift of mankind, and women too.
NSA: The Israelis have made it clear that they are going to take action with or without us. That’s bound to rattle our friends in the region. The Egyptian and Omani Presidents are already burning good copper on the Hotline.
Bush: What! We certainly cannot allow those Zionist hotheads in Jericho to preempt us. I recommend that we immediately send a powerful message to the Iranish leadership, what are our options?
SS: I think the Israelis will strongly object to being called Zionist Hotheads. And their capital is Jerusalem; Jericho is a city in disputed Palestine, in the West Bank to be exact. Do you wish that I make a case at the Security Council?
NSA: That would unnecessarily be prolonging affairs not with the Russians in their current nasty funk. We cannot even count on the support of our so-called allies in NATO; they would stick it to us so that they can continue their old world game. We cannot even count on our new friends in Poland and Georgia.
Bush: What, Georgia will follow our lead. I know Governor Palin personally; I will get on the wire to him later and straighten things out. What to do about those Polacks?
NSA: We can let them have the new SATINT on Russian forces?
BUSH: SATINT, where is that?
SD: SATINIT is SATellite INTelligence. They refer to pictures from our orbiting military satellite. Satellites are…
BUSH: Gosh, I sure know what a satellite is. I used to fly a kite when I was a kid.
SS: They are hardly the same thing. Should I consult our NATO allies and canvass their opinion?
Bush: We cannot let the history of the history, em… let judgment accuse us of probasti, no, eh, abstenation. What do you guys say we send a few cruise missiles to Baghdad so that those sheep heads will know that we mean business. Nobody mess up with us.
SS: Baghdad?
NSA: You meant Teheran, Mr. President.
Bush: Tirani, or wherever those Al-Qaeda fundamentalists are hiding their Camel heads.
SD: We have got the Fifth and Sixth Fleet in the region. And there are two or three Battle groups that can be called upon in a jiffy.
SS: We shouldn’t be hasty in these matters. The Atomic Agency is still talking to the Iranians. And convincing the international community would be a hard sell given the Iraqi debacle. No one will believe us.
Bush: We allow the enemy to take the battle to us at our own peril; that is the number one, undermental, uh, fundamental military strategy. Offense is the best defense, according to history historians, em, and military historians. Remember that I am a war President.
SD: Right on mark, Mr. President. We can take Teheran out tonight. Tomorrow morning we begin a saturated carpet-bombing that will reduce Iran to the Ice age.
NSA: We can begin crippling their communications immediately.
Bush: That would be wonderful. Marvelous. We shall do all within our hands and powers to extend the frontiers of liberty.
PS: How on earth do Western leaders get away with their vast crimes? In other societies, War Criminals like George Bush would be languishing in jail or facing serious criminal charges. No one will ever know how many innocent Iraqis or Afghans this Moron in the White House sent unto painful, untimely death. What we know, however, is that the Charles Taylor’s crimes pale in comparison to the vast crimes of this imbecilic 43rd President of the USA.
PSS: Let’s all hope and pray that Mr. Barack Obama will not don the toga of War President. That he shall learn to beat the American sword into ploughshare, and help restore peace, friendship and harmony throughout the world.
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