Some time ago, there was a lot of dissatisfaction expressed, in this
forum, about so called foreign experts who having only spent a couple
of days in Africa would return to the West to write their insightful
expert, often distorted reports about various aspects of the Dark
Continent.
In my view - and very practically speaking, we have to be careful
because as things are, politically speaking, there is always the
difference between constructive criticism and destructive criticism;
there is the tendency for the opposition parties in our African
countries to go the extra mile in criticizing, even demonizing
incumbent governments to the point of grossly exaggerating some of the
corruption and nepotism and injustice, especially to the outside
world, to score political points - and by pandering to what Moses Ebe
Ochonu refers to as "the prejudice of Westerners", to even demand that
foreign aid be terminated - that some people in government only fill
their own pockets with the aid that was meant to for the country.
And then in some cases, as happened in Sierra Leone, the opposition
can win an election - and then have to set out on a re-branding
exercise: re-branding the tattered / tarnished image, that they
themselves helped to create of the country as a cesspool of corruption
when they were in opposition.
Erasing that kind of image of a country is not easily done. This being
the case, without splitting hairs, this is why I'm inclined to
agree with, Kwabena Akurang-Parry that " This is the more reason why
we should rethink what we say about our countries.", without that
implying that either of us would like to silence freedom of speech or
accurate reporting - or even criminalize malicious intentions.There
are of course criminal procedures that can be taken against libel and
slander.
This interesting discussion ( link below) about the image of Africa
in the West is moderated by Marika Griehsel who worked as a Swedish
TV correspondent stationed in South Africa, 1990-2001.
The discussion is from around the time of the African Book Fair in
Göteborg last year, with Nuruddin Farah among others, on the panel.
(I dream that Pius Adesanmi will be at the next African Book Fair in
Sweden and will be on such a panel, for such a discussion!)
The discussion continues in English 2.45 minutes into the recording:
On 25 Jan, 15:58, "Kissi, Edward" <eki...@usf.edu> wrote:
> Ikhide,
>
> I agree with Tony that you owe Kwabena Akurang-Parry an apology and one that should be expressed immediately in this forum. You may not be aware of the weight of the charge of "anti-semitism" in our world today. I know something about it because I study the Holocaust and am aware of the anti-Semitic prejudices that caused it. There is nothing anti-semitic about the perspectives Kwabena offered about the Madoff case. To impute anti-Semitic motives and prejudices to him and those perspectives he offered is beyond the pale and the bounds of analytic decency. It is not free speech. It is hate-speech. Kwabena Akurang-Parry is not the person you have so gravely mischaracterized here. I know Akurang-Parry. He is a friend of mine. I went to the same school with him and studied in the same Department with him. He is no anti-semite. If he does not strike you as anti-semitic, then why insinuate that he is or may be. Whatever we do, we should be careful not to throw charges of anti-Semitism about in a cavalier way. They are not helpful to those who throw them, and they are hurtful to the decent character of those against whom those charges are thrown.
>
> Let the record reflect that Ikhide has falsely and unfairly assassinated the character of Kwabena Akurang-Parry!
>
> Edward Kissi
>
> From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com [mailto:usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Tony Agbali
> Sent: Monday, January 24, 2011 11:04 PM
> To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
> Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Wealth - Caveat Emptor
>
> Ikhide,
>
> "Professor Akurang-Parry's choice of the Madoff saga to illustrate whatever case is inappropriate and unfortunate. For contrary to his flip remarks, the Madoff situation has indeed bred a rebirth of anti-semitic glee among those who see in Madoff the worst of those of the Jewish faith. It has been a case of bludgeoning the victim twice. Professor Akurang-Parry is either willfully ignorant or hugely insensitive to the heartbreak of victims whose only crime was to trust someone with their life savings. I think in this case, the good professor would choose to be characterized as willfully ignorant. He doesn't strike me as someone so insensitive as to expose himself to unfair charges of anti-semitism. But then, what do I know?"- Ikhide
>
> Ikhide, where did the Professor Akurang-Parry insinuate anti-semitism? Just where or how? It is your own darkened imagination imputing to the man what he had not inferred. Because Madoff breds such imagination in the minds of folks does not mean that Akurang-Parr has stated it.
>
> Rather, than him you are the one who is being anti-semitic here, using Akurang-Parry as your smokescreen for your dejectable bigotry and sentimental cowardice. This is pitiful. You always insinuate wild-card offensive things about others. Who they hell dare you? A Joseph McCarthy reincarnate causing wild card scare?
>
> You truly a bemusing and despicable scarescrow! There is saying that once you become an adult you outgrow eating the chicken head and struggling for its feet!
>
> You are the one who will not see anything good about the return of stolen Benin artifacts to its aborigine! You reduced Uwem Akpan's writings as not worthy of respect, the man went on to win awards and place among Oprah's must read. You are trying to be original but your "kpankolo head" and "bad belle" no dey allow you think right. Please, don't let me imagine that that your oldies Cecilia "baby pan-cake" made you misspoke!
>
> Ikhide we need to plug your mind on life-support, it is failing you abysmally!
>
> Seriously, you owe Akurang-Parry an apology and a retraction of that bogey of a labeling of him as anti-semitic, when in fact, there is nothing within his perspective to ever suggest that, in all his discursive engagements herein. You, also owe every Jew, an apology, for this crafty way to be anti-Jewish and anti-semitic, in your passive-aggressive assault and insensitivity. Else, you Ikhide, would be adjudged as having committed a crass crime against humanity! Of course, until you apologize, you need to promptly resign that your Ombudsman position in God knows where, for this avid hatred of Jews!
>
> --- On Mon, 1/24/11, xoki...@yahoo.com <xoki...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> From: xoki...@yahoo.com <xoki...@yahoo.com>
> Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Wealth - Caveat Emptor
> To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
> Cc: meoch...@gmail.com, KAP...@ship.edu, piusadesa...@yahoo.com
> Date: Monday, January 24, 2011, 5:00 PM
> "The whole Madoff's scam throws light on the ways that hegemony and the constructions of the "other" work. Madoff has been singled out as ONE American criminal. Just imagine if Madoff as a Ghanaian whose criminal activities had brought down the world's economy and consider the generalizations that would have been perpetrated to demonize not only Ghanaians, but all Africans! This is the more reason why we should rethink what we say about our countries."
>
> - Kwabena Akurang-Parry
>
> Professor Akurang-Parry's choice of the Madoff saga to illustrate whatever case is inappropriate and unfortunate. For contrary to his flip remarks, the Madoff situation has indeed bred a rebirth of anti-semitic glee among those who see in Madoff the worst of those of the Jewish faith. It has been a case of bludgeoning the victim twice. Professor Akurang-Parry is either willfully ignorant or hugely insensitive to the heartbreak of victims whose only crime was to trust someone with their life savings. I think in this case, the good professor would choose to be characterized as willfully ignorant. He doesn't strike me as someone so insensitive as to expose himself to unfair charges of anti-semitism. But then, what do I know?
>
> And if you ask me, I would lose those proverbs from Ghana. They are now used inappropriately to parody and diminish a people. Proverbs were not meant to make caricatures out of the good people of Ghana. But then it is up to Professor Akurang-Parry and his people. I am not from Ghana.
>
> - Ikhide
> Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T
> ________________________________
> From: Moses Ebe Ochonu <meoch...@gmail.com>
> Sender: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
> Date: Sat, 22 Jan 2011 09:13:04 -0600
> To: <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
> ReplyTo: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
> Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Wealth - Caveat Emptor
>
> Nana Kwabena Akurang-Parry,
>
> Oh, self-appointed gate-keeper of Pan-African correctness, I withheld my "Abdul Bangura plague" from you but you unburdened the full weight of your Akan fury on me. I critique you in the honest spirit of intellectual disputation and you attack with venom and inexplicable hostility, replete with proverbs and Ghana-speak putdowns. Wetin, my broda?
>
> Anyway, sha, my point is a simple one: there are many Pan-Africanisms and nationalisms. Your own brand dictates that "we should be careful about what we say about our countries" (euphemism for "don't criticize or say negative things in public forums about your countries, their leaderships, peoples, and vices or don't be too harsh or unforgiving in your critique. This is consistent with your constant railings and accusations against Nigerian critics who in your opinion are too harsh in "badmouthing" their country) because it might reinforce or inspire the collective labeling of Africans/Nigerians/Ghanaians. As you know, I consider this Pan-Africanism of whitewashing African problems and denying African dysfunction a romantic, insensitive, unsophisticated, self-defeating, irresponsible, and elitist genre of pan-Africanism and nationalism. But we understand each other and our disagreement. No need for hair-splitting.
>
> On Fri, Jan 21, 2011 at 8:14 PM, Akurang-Parry, Kwabena <KAP...@ship.edu<http://us.mc539.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=KAP...@ship.edu>> wrote:
>
> Chief Moses,
>
> I thank Onyankopong [God] that you did not unleash your "Abdul Bangura plague" on me! I would like to remind you that speaking of a thing is not the same as speaking for it. It is an old Akan saying that may serve us well on this forum.
>
> I concluded my signification of Madoff's scam and the ways that the West frames the "other" with the following: "This is the more reason why we should rethink what we say about our countries."
>
> You have imputed asymmetrical, disapproving angles to my statement: you write "if you have to self-censor, withhold truth, embellish, or outright lie about your country or continent..."
>
> Haba Moses, tell me which part of my statement explicitly or implicitly means that we must adorn Africa with self-censorship, embellishment, or lies? Did it ever occur to you that "rethink" could also mean how to re/consider what the West says about Africa? Is the word rethink synonymous with negativities in your dictionary?
>
> I am very glad that you enunciate the following:
>
> "I resent any nationalist or pan-African script that forbids me from telling truth about my country/continent and its many troubles. In fact I reject even a more benign attempt to impose a particular vocabulary or stylistic slant on my discourses regarding a country that I am familiar with and in which I am invested."
>
> You may engage in resentment within your own allowable limits. Certainly what I wrote does not hold you or anyone hostage to any fraudulent orthodoxy of Africanizing. Mine is as much an opinion as yours! I am not gate-keeping how to re/construct or re/think Africa. As you often do here, your intellectual labors push subjectivity to the point of disturbing inchoateness. Who said that I wrote from some standpoints of nationalism and pan-Africanism, and where did you learn that nationalists and pan-Africanists are incapable of evocative appreciations of problems facing the continent?
>
> My Broda Moses, as we say in Ghana, the horse you have groomed for yourself may be "too taller" for you!
> Kwabena
> ________________________________
> From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com<http://us.mc539.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=usaafricadialogue@google...> [usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com<http://us.mc539.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=usaafricadialogue@google...>] on behalf of Moses Ebe Ochonu [meoch...@gmail.com<http://us.mc539.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=meoch...@gmail.com>]
> Sent: Friday, January 21, 2011 1:49 PM
> To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com<http://us.mc539.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=usaafricadialogue@google...>
> Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Wealth - Caveat Emptor
> "This is the more reason why we should rethink what we say about our countries. "
>
> Madoff or no Madoff, it is not what we say about our countries or continent that produces and disseminates the pathology of Nigerian, Ghanaian, or African collective badness. It is the prejudice of Westerners, their haughty hegemony, and, as you yourself stated, their control of the global organs of mass image making and unmaking--the mass media. In any case, if you have to self-censor, withhold truth, embellish, or outright lie about your country or continent because you fear that it may fuel the Western collectivization of "African" vice, are you not pandering to the gods of Western labeling and allowing them to shape your discourse on your own country/continent? I resent any nationalist or pan-African script that forbids me from telling truth about my country/continent and its many troubles. In fact I reject even a more benign attempt to impose a particular vocabulary or stylistic slant on my discourses regarding a country that I am familiar with and in which I am invested. Self-censorship in the name of preventing the negative Othering of our people and countries is self-immolation. It is also cowardice in the face of Western racist prejudice. Speak truth about your country and your continent no matter how uncomfortable it may be. This is what we owe our beleaguered peoples. If some prejudiced white person or institution insists on labeling our countries or continent because of the sins of a few or uses what you say as an alibi to impugn your people, name and shame them by calling attention to their underlying prejudice. Speaking truth about one's country and fighting against its unfair stereotyping should coexist just fine.
> On Fri, Jan 21, 2011 at 11:15 AM, Akurang-Parry, Kwabena <KAP...@ship.edu<http://us.mc539.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=KAP...@ship.edu>> wrote:
> The whole Madoff's scam throws light on the ways that hegemony and the constructions of the "other" work. Madoff has been singled out as ONE American criminal. Just imagine if Madoff as a Ghanaian whose criminal activities had brought down the world's economy and consider the generalizations that would have been perpetrated to demonize not only Ghanaians, but all Africans! This is the more reason why we should rethink what we say about our countries.
>
> Kwabena
> ________________________________
> From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com<http://us.mc539.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=usaafricadialogue@google...> [usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com<http://us.mc539.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=usaafricadialogue@google...>] on behalf of Funmi Tofowomo Okelola [cafeafrica...@aol.com<http://us.mc539.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=cafeafrica...@aol.com>]
> Sent: Thursday, January 20, 2011 6:36 PM
> To: USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com<http://us.mc539.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=USAAfricaDialogue@google...>
> Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Wealth - Caveat Emptor
> Wealth - Caveat Emptor
> Bernard Madoff's $50 billion scam teaches valueable lessons
> By Ellen Paris
>
> Photo Credit: ISTOCKPHOTO
> That billionaire Mort Zuckerman could fall victim to Bernard Madoff leaves average investors shaking in their boots. Brian Shea, vice president and regional manager of Wells Fargo's Wealth Management Group, knows this firsthand. "This has hit a vein here," he says. "It's no surprise that we're hearing from local clients that know someone hit hard by Madoff. Your money must be well diversified. We talk about that all the time, but we're seeing so many investors who gave Madoff practically everything."
>
> No matter what entity you invest with, review your portfolio closely and often. More importantly, entrusting all your money to a single investment adviser - no matter how trusted - is risky business.
>
> Due diligence was lacking among Madoff's clients. Those involved claim he had an aura about him that precluded asking questions. "He was known to be evasive in communication and give black-box kinds of answers," says Shea, who's based in Palm Desert. Investors have the right to demand to speak directly to the person managing their money and making investment decisions - including direct portfolio and fund managers.
>
> "There needs to be total transparency with money managers and quarterly meetings directly with them and not their intermediaries," Shea says.
>
> Check the backgrounds of people managing your money. Request client names, both past and present, and talk to their competitors.
>
> In an essay published in The Wall Street Journal, psychologist and author Stephen Greenspan explored the reasons why wealthy people fall for shysters like Madoff. Greenspan, who himself lost money to Madoff, wrote, "The Madoff scam had social feedback pressures that were very strong. Newspaper reports described how wealthy retirees in Florida joined Mr. Madoff's country club for the sole reason of having an opportunity to meet him socially and be invited to invest directly with him."
>
> Marc Beauchamp, a former NASDAQ spokesperson during Madoff's tenure there, views it this way: "Madoff is a prime example of affinity fraud pure and simple, with unsuspecting victims believing something that was too good to be true." Affinity fraud is a scam that targets members of a specific demographic group. "In Madoff's case, his victims were wealthy and many were Jewish," Beauchamp notes.
>
> The first mistake Madoff investors made was entrusting hefty sums of money to an individual. "Anytime you deal with a sole proprietor or small shop, you can't do the necessary due diligence you can do with a large firm," says Jim Estes, associate professor of finance at Cal State San Bernardino. Madoff's credibility was based on his wide network of friendships. It was difficult to identify the clearing broker, critical to ascertain when investing with a small company. You also want to see monthly and proxy statements directly from the funds in which you invest. "With computers and the various software programs available today, anyone who sets out to create fraud can," Estes warns. "They can produce all kinds of bogus statements."
>
> Before giving your money to anyone, check with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (www.finra.org<http://www.finra.org/>) to ensure they are licensed and to see what arbitration and mediation history they have. FINRA is the largest independent regulator for securities firms doing business in the United States. It oversees nearly 5,000 brokerage firms, about 172,000 branch offices, and approximately 665,000 registered securities representatives.
>
> An SEC rule that loosened regulation for private brokerage firms such as Madoff's has not been extended into 2009. Haddon Libby, chief financial officer of El Paseo Bank who spent years in private banking, considers that a positive move. "This is important that the SEC is fixing this rule, because the more you have people really looking over people's shoulders, the better," he says. Libby also points to "making sure your money is held by well-respected and recognizable custodians like Schwab, LPL, Bank of New York Mellon, or Fidelity."
>
> Most importantly, Madoff boasted to have only two down months in 20 years. Realistically, nobody can claim that kind of record. Who you invest with goes back to one simple guideline: Caveat emptor (buyer beware).
>
> http://www.cafeafricana.com<http://www.cafeafricana.com/>
>
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> ---Mohandas Gandhi
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>
> ---Mohandas Gandhi
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