From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com [mailto:usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Ndubisi Obiorah
Sent: Wednesday, August 31, 2011 2:22 AM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Fwd: [From: kenneth harrow] Libya'sspectacular revolution has been disgraced by racism
"We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office..." - Aesop
Kwasi
A rational person will make a deal with the devil, any person, to get rid of the Gaddafi dictatorship. The assumption is that the devil will leave gladly after you get rid of Gaddafi. There is no evidence in history that that is the case. The emancipators need to extract a price for ‘freeing’ you. That is just fair business. Whether you will end up better off after being liberated is an empirical issue. And it depends on how you define ‘better off’. If the value you place on not living under Gaddafi’s dictatorship exceeds the inevitable chaos and shortages in the short and immediate run, then you are better off, I guess. So one will say, the answer to your question depends on the collective definition of well-being by the citizens. The Gadhafi loyalists will be worse off while the NTC people will believe they are well off. The message I take from this exercise is that the dictators in power in Africa must be looking over their shoulders. Sarkozy is on a roll in Africa.
Kwaku Mensah
From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com [mailto:usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Kwasi Gyan-Apenteng
Sent: Tuesday, August 30, 2011 5:21 PM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com; GLU Forum
Subject: RE: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Fwd: [From: kenneth harrow] Libya'sspectacular revolution has been disgraced by racism
A couple of weeks ago I asked a question for which I am still looking for an answer.
I am against NATO bombing of Libya but here is the question:
If you were a Libyan who did not like Gaddafi's rule
and the grooming of his son's to continue his dictatorship,
what would you do, especially as there were no prospects for elections or change in any form?
Answers please....
Kwasi
Kwasi Gyan-Apenteng,
Journalist & Communications Consultant
Accra
President,
Ghana Association of Writers
PAWA House, Accra
From: theai@earthlink.net
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com; USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
Subject: RE: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Fwd: [From: kenneth harrow] Libya'sspectacular revolution has been disgraced by racism
Date: Tue, 30 Aug 2011 17:54:14 -0400No, no, no, Mwalimu Kenneth Harrow, do not try to minimize the Satanic acts of the racist Benghazi Arab Libyans by equating them with a myth. This is not new. It was Gadhaffi that helped to minimize the murder and victimization of poor Black Afrikans in Libya. That is one reason they hate him so much. As I told you some time ago, all that nonsense about Black Afrikan mercenaries, as if there are no Black Libyans, is just that: nonsense.
----- Original Message -----
From: kenneth harrow
Sent: 8/30/2011 3:19:38 PM
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Fwd: [From: kenneth harrow] Libya'sspectacular revolution has been disgraced by racism
troubling report.
i do remember a similar report that castigated both sides for their racism, earlier on.
ken
-------- Original Message --------
Subject:
[From: kenneth harrow] Libya's spectacular revolution has been disgraced by racism
Date:
Tue, 30 Aug 2011 19:07:30 +0100 (BST)
From:
To:
kenneth harrow spotted this on the guardian.co.uk site and thought you should see it.To see this story with its related links on the guardian.co.uk site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/aug/30/libya-spectacular-revolution-disgraced-racismLibya's spectacular revolution has been disgraced by racismThe murder of black men in the aftermath of the rebellion speaks of a society deeply divided for decades by Muammar GaddafiRichard SeymourWednesday August 31 2011The Guardianhttp://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/aug/30/libya-spectacular-revolution-disgraced-racism"This is a bad time to be a black man in Libya," reported Alex Thomson [http://youtu.be/EhshGX4x3rY" title="] on Channel 4 News on Sunday. Elsewhere, Kim Sengupta reported for the Independent [http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/rebels-settle-scores-in-libyan-capital-2344671.html" title="] on the 30 bodies lying decomposing in Tripoli. The majority of them, allegedly mercenaries for Muammar Gaddafi, were black. They had been killed at a makeshift hospital, some on stretchers, some in an ambulance. "Libyan people don't like people with dark skins," a militiaman explained [http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/libyans-dont-like-people-with-dark-skin-but-some-are-innocent-2345859.html" title="] in reference to the arrests of black men.The basis of this is rumours, disseminated early in the rebellion, of African mercenaries being unleashed on the opposition. Amnesty International's Donatella Rivera was among researchers who examined this allegation and found no evidence for it. Peter Bouckaert of Human Rights Watch similarly had not "identified one mercenary" [http://www.theage.com.au/world/africans-targeted-as-rebels-hunt-mercenaries-20110305-1bivv.html" title="">"identified one mercenary] among the scores of men being arrested and falsely labelled by journalists as such.Lurking behind this is racism. Libya is an African nation ? however, the term "Africans" is used in Libya to reference the country's black minority. The Amnesty International researcher Diana Eltahawy [http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2011/0829/In-Tripoli-African-mercenaries-at-risk" title="] says that the rebels taking control of Libya have tapped into "existing xenophobia". The New York Times refers to "racist overtones" [http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/24/world/africa/24fog.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all" title="">refers to "racist overtones], but sometimes the racism is explicit. A rebel slogan [http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304887904576395143328336026.html" title="] painted in Misrata during the fighting salutes "the brigade for purging slaves, black skin". A consequence of this racism has been mass arrests [http://articles.latimes.com/2011/mar/24/world/la-fg-libya-prisoners-20110324" title="] of black men [http://www.theage.com.au/world/africans-targeted-as-rebels-hunt-mercenaries-20110305-1bivv.html" title="], and gruesome killings [http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iguwImnkLDagEFqL5wmghAzQYxsA?docId=96d60e2881b7421ba4c6214324af1170" title="] ? just some of the various [http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jSpsLoDHEaqekqcHUHKBzA5YGaZQ?docId=CNG.c12c140bd2e4fc0a6a87ad853c05ac1c.3f1" title="] atrocities that human rights organisations blame rebels for. [http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/13/world/africa/13libya.html" title="] The racialisation of this conflict does not end with hatred of "Africans". Graffiti [http://www.npr.org/blogs/pictureshow/2011/04/17/135435354/gadhafi-graffiti-in-libya?ft=1&f=1009" title="] by rebels frequently depicted Gaddafi as a demonic Jew.How did it come to this? A spectacular revolution, speaking the language of democracy and showing tremendous courage in the face of brutal repression, has been disgraced. Racism did not begin with the rebellion ? Gaddafi's regime exploited 2 million migrant workers while discriminating against them [http://www.alternet.org/world/150350/libyan_uprising_fueling_racism_against_black_africans/" title="] ? but it has suffused the rebels' hatred of the violently authoritarian regime they have just replaced.An explanation for this can be found in the weaknesses of the revolt itself. The upsurge beginning on 17 February hinged on an alliance between middle class human rights activists and the working classes in eastern cities such as Benghazi. Rather than wilting under repression, the rebellion spread to new towns and cities. Elements of the regime, seeing the writing on the wall, began to defect. Military leaders, politicians and sections of business and academia sided with the rebels.But the trouble was that the movement was almost emerging from nowhere. Unlike in Egypt, where a decade of activism and labour insurgency had cultivated networks of activists and trade unionists capable of outfoxing the dictatorship, Libya was not permitted a minimal space for civil society opposition. As a result, there was no institutional structure able to express this movement, no independent trade union movement, and certainly little in the way of an organised left. Into this space stepped those who had the greatest resources ? the former regime notables, businessmen and professionals, as well as exiles. It was they who formed the National Transitional Council (NTC).The dominance of relatively conservative elites and the absence of countervailing pressures skewed the politics of the rebellion. We hear of "the masses", and "solidarity". But masses can be addressed on many grounds ? some reactionary. There are also many bases for solidarity ? some exclusionary. The scapegoating of black workers makes sense from the perspective of elites. For them, Libya was not a society divided on class lines from which many of them had profited. It was united against a usurper inhabiting an alien compound and surviving through foreign power. Instead, the more success Gaddafi had in stabilising his regime, the more the explanation for this relied on the claim that "Gaddafi is killing us with his Africans [http://tomathon.com/mphp/2011/02/libyas-african-mercenary-problem/" title="] ".A further, unavoidable twist is the alliance with Nato. The February revolt involved hundreds of thousands of people across Libya. By early March the movement was in retreat, overseas special forces were entering Libya, and senior figures in the rebellion called for external intervention. Initially isolated, they gained credibility as Gaddafi gained ground. As a result, the initiative passed from a very large popular base to a relatively small number of armed fighters under the direction of the NTC and Nato. It was the rebel army that subsequently took the lead in persecuting black workers.Under different conditions, perhaps, unity between the oppressed was possible. But this would probably have required a more radical alliance, one as potentially perilous for those now grooming themselves for office as for Gaddafi. As it is, the success of the rebels contains a tragic defeat. The original emancipatory impulse of February 17 lies, for now, among the corpses of "Africans" in Tripoli.If you have any questions about this email, please contact the guardian.co.uk user help desk: userhelp@guardian.co.uk.guardian.co.uk Copyright (c) Guardian News and Media Limited. 2011Registered in England and Wales No. 908396Registered office: PO Box 68164, Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1P 2APPlease consider the environment before printing this email.------------------------------------------------------------------Visit guardian.co.uk - newspaper of the yearwww.guardian.co.uk www.observer.co.ukOn your mobile, visit m.guardian.co.uk or download the GuardianiPhone app www.guardian.co.uk/iphoneTo save up to 30% when you subscribe to the Guardian and the Observervisit www.guardian.co.uk/subscriber---------------------------------------------------------------------This e-mail and all attachments are confidential and may alsobe privileged. If you are not the named recipient, please notifythe sender and delete the e-mail and all attachments immediately.Do not disclose the contents to another person. You may not usethe information for any purpose, or store, or copy, it in any way.Guardian News & Media Limited is not liable for any computerviruses or other material transmitted with or as part of thise-mail. You should employ virus checking software.Guardian News & Media LimitedA member of Guardian Media Group plcRegistered OfficePO Box 68164Kings Place90 York WayLondonN1P 2APRegistered in England Number 908396
--kenneth w. harrowprofessor of englishmichigan state universitydepartment of englisheast lansing, mi 48824-1036ph. 517 803 8839harrow@msu.edu
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